Anxiety Therapy in the North Bay

When anxiety is subtle, it’s easy to miss

Anxiety can show up in different ways. For some people, it looks like avoidance. Putting things off, feeling stuck, or having trouble moving toward something. And avoidance works for a while. At some point though, we can’t avoid something… and then the anxiety kicks into full gear.

For others, it hides inside competence. You stay organized, think things through, keep everything moving. From the outside it looks like conscientiousness. From the inside it’s closer to vigilance: replaying a conversation that already ended, circling a decision long after you have what you need, never quite off duty, even on a day off.

Overthinking, people-pleasing, and perfectionism

These three tend to travel together. Thinking everything through. Tracking how other people are reacting to you. Holding yourself to a standard no one else quite sees. In codependent patterns, other people’s moods start to feel like your job to manage.

None of this came from nowhere. Usually it began as an intelligent response to a situation where being attuned, careful, or right really mattered, often early in life. It served an important role, and it worked. That’s part of why it’s so hard to set down.

However, maintaining these patterns requires you feel on edge, waiting for something bad to happen. That gets tiring, and in addition to anxiety, over time it can lead to burnout.

The deeper cost is often harder to see. When so much attention goes toward managing how things will land, you gradually lose contact with what’s actually true for you: what you feel, what you want, what you’d say if you weren’t calculating the effect. The part of you that knows those things doesn’t disappear. It goes into hiding. And after enough years, it can be hard to tell the difference between who you are and who you’ve learned to be.

Why understanding it isn’t enough

Many people who come to me have spent years trying to think their way out of anxiety. They argue with it:

“I shouldn’t think that.”
“That’s not rational. Why am I so worried?”
“I know better than this.”

I’ve rarely seen that work on its own. More often it adds a second layer: now you’re anxious, and you’re also frustrated with yourself for being anxious. From there it’s easy to get caught in a loop of self-criticism.

Reasoning with anxiety can help, but usually only after something else happens first: learning to accept it, and to get curious about what it might be bringing to you. Most people skip that step. It’s understandable, since anxiety feels like something to get rid of, not something to listen to.

In our work, that’s where we start. Rather than trying to talk you out of the anxiety, we slow down and get to know it: where you feel it, what sets it off, what it seems to be guarding against. It’s often carrying something real: an old fear, another strong emotion, or a need that hasn’t been understood. There are layers to our experience that we peel back one by one, and as we get better at doing that, the anxiety usually has less need to keep insisting.

What anxiety therapy can support

The goal isn’t to get rid of anxiety completely. It’s to change your relationship to it. Paradoxically, the less you treat anxiety as something dangerous, the less intense it tends to become.

Over time, that can look like:

• Less mental looping and second-guessing

• More ease in day-to-day moments

• Feeling more settled, even when things aren’t perfect

• A different experience of rest—where it’s easier to actually land

This tends to happen gradually, in a way that feels integrated rather than forced.

My approach

I work with adults who are thoughtful and capable, but feel caught in patterns that don’t fully shift on their own.

Our work is collaborative and paced.

We’ll look at what’s happening beneath the surface, how it shows up in your body and relationships, and what begins to shift when you relate to those patterns differently.

I integrate insight with somatic work, so you’re not only understanding your experience—you’re developing the capacity for embodied change.

Anxiety therapy in the North Bay (and across the SF Bay Area)

I offer anxiety therapy for adults in the North Bay, including Marin and Sonoma County, as well as across the SF Bay Area via telehealth.

Many of the people I work with are looking for something beyond coping strategies—they want to understand and shift what’s actually driving their experience.

If you tend to resonate with what’s often called high-functioning anxiety, you can read more about that here.

You don’t have to wait until things get worse

People often reach out when things feel overwhelming.

But it can also start with a quieter recognition that something doesn’t feel sustainable.

You might notice that you’re:

• Spending a lot of time in your head

• Finding it hard to fully relax

• Feeling a constant sense of pressure or responsibility

Even if things are working, it can still feel like a lot to carry.

Get started

If you’re interested in working together, you’re welcome to reach out for a consultation.

We can talk through what’s been going on and get a sense of whether this feels like a good fit.