Anxiety Therapy in Orange County
In-person in Tustin, CA · Online throughout California
You wake up already braced for something.
There's the stomach ache before anything has happened. The conversation from Tuesday you're still rewriting. The email you've reread four times. The mental audit that runs at 2am, checking every relationship for signs you've done something wrong.
You know it isn't rational. You've known that for years. It has never once made it stop.
What we treat:
High-functioning anxiety
From the outside you're doing well — the job, the standards, the reliability. Inside, it runs on dread, and slowing down feels dangerous. This is the most common presentation we see, and the one people are least likely to think qualifies for help.
Panic attacks and panic disorder
The racing heart, the tightening chest, the certainty that something is medically wrong. Then the second layer: the fear of the next one, which starts quietly shrinking where you're willing to go.
Generalized anxiety
Worry that moves. Resolve one thing and it relocates to the next. It doesn't feel like a disorder so much as a personality trait you'd like to return.
Social anxiety
Replaying conversations. Scanning faces for evidence you've said the wrong thing. Declining things you actually wanted to do, because the anticipation costs more than the event is worth.
Rumination and reassurance-seeking
The conversation you've replayed forty times looking for the moment you got it wrong. Asking someone whether they're sure they're not annoyed with you, feeling better for an hour, then needing to ask again. Rereading the email you already sent.
Each round brings relief that's real and short — and the relief is what keeps the loop going.
Perfectionism and burnout
A standard you'd never apply to anyone else, held so long it stopped feeling like a choice. And what comes after years of it: the flatness, the resentment, the sense that you're running on something that ran out a while ago.
Burnout is often perfectionism finally sending the bill.
How we help:
Anxiety isn't the problem — it's an alarm system doing its job too well. The work is finding what keeps tripping the alarm, and giving you something better than avoidance to answer it with.
Cognitive behavioral therapy targets the cycle itself: the thought that starts it, the behavior that brings relief, and the relief that guarantees a repeat. Naming that loop out loud is usually the first time it becomes something you can interrupt rather than something that happens to you. Brittany leads this work and is strongest with panic, rumination, and the perfectionism underneath both.
EMDR, when your anxiety has a starting point. Some anxiety is generalized. Some traces back to something specific — an event, a period, a relationship — and stays lodged in a body that never got the message it was over. When that's the picture, talk therapy can hit a ceiling, and EMDR often moves what talking couldn't. Chloe is EMDR-trained. [More about EMDR →]
We'll tell you which is likely to help on your consultation call, and we'll change course if the first approach isn't working.
When anxiety and food are tangled together:
Anxiety and eating disorders travel together more often than not. Restriction can quiet anxiety. Bingeing can numb it. Exercise can outrun it. Control over food can feel like control over everything else.
Treating one and ignoring the other usually means the anxiety finds a new outlet, or the eating disorder returns the first time life gets hard.
This overlap is what our practice is built around. If both are in the picture, you won't have to explain one to a therapist who only understands the other.
You've been managing this a long time.
Tell us what's going on and we'll tell you honestly whether we can help.