Therapy for Anxiety in Pasadena
Anxiety, panic, obsessions, and insecurities all have one thing in common– fear. At their root, these descriptive words describe fearful emotions running amok, making life extremely painful and often very difficult to navigate. There are multiple causes for fear, such as lingering traumas from childhood, relationship conflict, or basic survival & existential insecurities. Anxiety, panic, insecurities, and obsessions can come up at any time and in any situation: within relationships, family dynamics, or simply when alone.
As someone who has traversed the landscape of my own fears, I personally understand what it’s like to suffer in this way. That suffering has led me to examine my own life, explore various ways of understanding fear, and find useful ways to work with it. My personal hardships have also provided the impetus to want to help others because I know how much it hurts, and I care. I provide therapy that is both practical and depth-oriented, offering tools to help my clients get through the passing storm now, while also finding their internal compass for future navigations. Therapy for anxiety in Pasadena, Los Angeles, is available for individuals, couples, children and families that are coping as best they can with anxiety and fear-based symptoms. These symptoms may manifest in the mind, the emotions, and oftentimes in the body as physical/medical conditions.
Unfortunately, anxiety won’t simply disappear by being ignored, suppressed, or escaped from. Rather, our willingness to be with, explore, and understand the verbal and non-verbal messages of anxiety will allow distressing symptoms to gradually unravel, in their own time. A skilled and compassionate therapist can provide the safe space, presence, and tools that are needed to initially and gently touch the edges of anxiety. In this way, we will find our way out of the nightmare of anxiety.
I would be honored to walk alongside you in your journey as you heal the anxieties and fears that are making your life difficult, unmanageable, or even unbearable. If you are interested in learning more about therapy for anxiety in Pasadena, Los Angeles, feel free to contact me for a free 15-minute consultation at (323) 577-3430, or message me through my contact page. I look forward to hearing from you.
Daniel
Types of Anxiety
- Obsessions are thoughts that are intrusive, repetitive, unwanted, and distressing. Beneath the obsessions are feeling states such as fear, alarm, insecurity, nervousness, and even terror. The thoughts in the mind often fuel the feelings, which in turn can fuel more obsessive thoughts. If this sounds like a painful vicious cycle, well, it is. Oftentimes, one realizes that the the obsessions are irrational and yet this insight doesn’t stop them from continuing to cycle through the mind. Insight is not enough– feelings must be addressed through inner work, which may involve an exploration of one’s emotions through body awareness or some form of verbal or non-verbal expression.
- Panic is usually characterized by a feeling that one is losing control– one’s grip on reality is slipping, the ground is falling out from under them, the internal alarm blasting at full volume. A feeling of desperation, terror, and alarm can overcome the sufferer who may try anything to get out of their predicament. The fight-flight-freeze reaction may be triggered, which may drive the sufferer to aggressively confront the perceived threat, run away, or freeze into a state of total immobility. When someone says they felt petrified, this is a good description of the freeze response. When panic reaches peak levels and fighting or freezing aren’t available to us, we may metaphorically petrify, “scared stiff” into a numbing paralysis. A pervasive derealization and/or depersonalization may follow.
- Generalized Anxiety is exactly what it sounds like: an anxiety that is generalized to everyday experience. This type of anxiety is often characterized by incessant worrying, to the point where the intrusive negative thoughts about bad things that could happen are experienced as chronic. In turn, this chronic worrying can cause emotional turmoil, because the sufferer gets absorbed in “catastrophizing”– the pattern of imagining the worst possible future outcomes. Obviously, this mental pattern has physical and emotional ramifications. Physical exhaustion and all sorts of other psychosomatic maladies may arise that are caused by chronic stress. Emotionally, one can become depleted of energy and feel depressed, hopeless, and helpless in the face of a mind that doesn’t stop worrying.
- (This section on types of anxiety is under construction)