Anxiety that won't quiet down, no matter what you try.
Body-based therapy for anxiety rooted in the nervous system, not just the mind.
What anxiety actually is
Anxiety is one of the most common reasons people seek therapy, and one of the most misunderstood. It is often treated as a thinking problem: catastrophic thoughts to be challenged, worries to be reframed, cognitive distortions to be corrected. And while these approaches can be genuinely helpful, they often miss something essential about what anxiety actually is and where it actually lives.
Anxiety is first and foremost a body state. A state of nervous system activation in which the system is oriented toward threat, scanning for danger, and mobilizing for response. The racing thoughts, the catastrophizing, the sense that something terrible is about to happen. These are not the cause of anxiety, they are its expression.
Anxiety is not a character flaw, a sign of weakness, or a thinking problem. It is a nervous system doing exactly what it was shaped to do, often in response to experiences that happened long before the current moment.
This is why people can understand their anxiety completely, can identify the triggers, trace the patterns, challenge the thoughts, and still feel anxious. Because understanding the anxiety from the outside doesn't change the nervous system state that's generating it from the inside.
How anxiety lives in the body and nervous system
The nervous system has two primary modes of activation: the sympathetic branch, which mobilizes for action — fight or flight — and the parasympathetic branch, which supports rest, digestion, and recovery. In a well-regulated nervous system, these two branches move fluidly between activation and settling, responding appropriately to real demands and returning to baseline when the demand passes.
Chronic anxiety is what happens when this fluid movement gets disrupted, when the nervous system becomes stuck in a state of high activation, perceiving threat even in the absence of real danger. This can happen as the result of acute trauma, but it also develops through subtler and more chronic experiences: growing up in an environment that wasn't consistently safe, learning early that vigilance was necessary for survival, or carrying the accumulated stress of navigating a world that feels perpetually demanding or unsafe.
Once the nervous system has learned to orient this way, it becomes its default setting. The body is chronically braced, the mind chronically scanning, the sense of ease or safety always just slightly out of reach. This is not something you can think your way out of because it is not primarily a thinking problem. It lives in the physiology, and that is where the most durable healing tends to happen.
Types of anxiety I work with
Chronic & generalized anxiety
A persistent background hum of worry, tension, or unease that doesn't attach to any single thing. It's the sense that something is always slightly wrong, that you're always waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Trauma-based anxiety
Anxiety rooted in past overwhelming experiences, where the nervous system learned that the world was unsafe and has remained in a state of vigilance ever since. Often presents as hypervigilance, startle responses, or anxiety that feels disproportionate to current circumstances.
Relational anxiety
Anxiety that lives primarily in relationships as fear of abandonment, of rejection, of being too much or not enough. Often rooted in early attachment experiences and the nervous system patterns that formed in response to them.
High-functioning anxiety
Anxiety that drives rather than disables. The perfectionism, over-preparation, people-pleasing, and relentless productivity that keeps the anxiety at bay while quietly exhausting the person beneath it. Often invisible to others and sometimes even to oneself.
Somatic anxiety
Anxiety that expresses primarily through the body as chronic tension, digestive issues, headaches, fatigue, or a persistent sense of physical unease without a clear medical explanation. The body carrying what the mind hasn't fully processed.
Existential anxiety
Anxiety about meaning, purpose, mortality, or the direction of one's life. A deeper unease that isn't resolved by managing circumstances or changing thoughts, but by addressing the underlying questions of meaning and belonging.
A note on OCD
While I am not an OCD specialist and do not offer Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), the gold-standard treatment for OCD, I am OCD-informed and experienced in working with mild to moderate OCD presentations alongside anxiety and trauma work. If you are experiencing OCD symptoms, I am happy to discuss whether my approach is a good fit for your needs, or to refer you to a specialist if a higher level of specialized care would serve you better.
Signs your anxiety runs deeper than stress
Anxiety rooted in the nervous system and early experience tends to have particular qualities that distinguish it from ordinary situational stress. Some signs that your anxiety may be running deeper:
It's always there as a background hum that persists even when circumstances are objectively fine
You've tried managing it, with the breathing exercises, the cognitive reframing, the mindfulness, and it helps in the moment but doesn't change the underlying pattern
Your body is chronically tense, braced, or on alert, even in situations you know are safe
You feel anxious about feeling anxious. It’s a secondary layer of worry about what the anxiety means or when it will get worse
It traces back as far as you can remember as a sense that you have always been this way, that anxiety is just part of who you are
It intensifies in relationships, particularly around intimacy, conflict, or the possibility of rejection or abandonment
You use busyness, perfectionism, or productivity to keep it at bay, and when you stop, it rushes in
You understand where it comes from, and that understanding hasn't made it quieter
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is the most widely used and researched approach to anxiety, and for good reason. It is effective, structured, and teaches concrete skills for managing anxious thinking. For many people it is genuinely helpful, and I don't dismiss its value. When appropriate, I will draw from CBT to support the whole treatment and for clients for who would benefit from the added structure.
But CBT works primarily at the level of thought. Identifying cognitive distortions, challenging catastrophic predictions, building coping strategies. This is valuable when anxiety is primarily a thinking problem. When anxiety is rooted in the nervous system, in early trauma, in developmental wounding, in a body that learned vigilance as a survival strategy, thought-level work often reaches a ceiling. You can challenge every thought and still feel anxious, because the anxiety isn't being generated by the thoughts. It's generating them.
Why somatic therapy is different from CBT for anxiety
| CBT approach | Somatic approach |
|---|---|
| How it works Identifies anxious thoughts, challenges their accuracy, builds coping strategies and behavioral changes. Highly structured, skill-based, and effective for anxiety that is primarily cognitive in nature. | How it works Works directly with the nervous system and body, helping the physiology shift out of chronic activation rather than managing the thoughts it produces. Addresses the source rather than the symptom. |
| Best suited for Situational anxiety, specific phobias, anxiety primarily driven by thinking patterns, people who want structured skill-building and clear techniques. | Best suited for Chronic anxiety with nervous system roots, anxiety rooted in trauma or early experience, high-functioning anxiety, anxiety that persists despite years of talk therapy or cognitive work. |
Somatic Experiencing (SE)
SE works directly with the nervous system state that underlies chronic anxiety, helping the body shift out of chronic sympathetic activation and learn what genuine ease and safety actually feel like. Rather than managing anxious thoughts, we work with the physiological state generating them, building the nervous system's capacity for regulation from the inside out.
Learn more about SE →Post Induction Therapy (PIT)
When anxiety is rooted in early relational experiences, in childhood environments that weren't consistently safe, in the internalized belief that vigilance was necessary to earn love or stay safe, PIT addresses those wounds directly. By working experientially with the parts of you that learned to be anxious, we can begin to shift the underlying beliefs and relational patterns that keep the nervous system activated.
Learn more about PIT →How SE and PIT address anxiety
For anxiety with roots in the nervous system and early experience, the most effective treatment addresses both where the anxiety lives physiologically and where it came from relationally.
SE creates the nervous system safety and regulation that makes deeper relational work possible. PIT addresses the early experiences and internalized beliefs that SE alone cannot fully reach. Together they offer something that neither approach provides alone, healing at both the physiological and relational roots of chronic anxiety.
I offer anxiety therapy via telehealth throughout California, with in-person and walk-and-talk sessions available in the Northeast Los Angeles area.
FAQs
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Anxiety is a normal human experience — a natural response to uncertainty, threat, or challenge. An anxiety disorder is when anxiety becomes persistent, disproportionate, and interfering — showing up regularly even in the absence of real threat and significantly affecting daily functioning, relationships, or quality of life. You don't need a formal diagnosis to benefit from therapy for anxiety. If your anxiety feels chronic, exhausting, or out of proportion to your circumstances, that's enough reason to seek support.
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Anxiety that persists even when circumstances are objectively safe is usually a sign that the nervous system has become calibrated to a threat level that no longer reflects reality. This happens when the nervous system has learned — through early experience, trauma, or prolonged stress — that vigilance is necessary for safety. The anxiety isn't responding to the present moment. It's responding to a pattern established long ago, often before you had words for it.
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Yes — and for many people with chronic anxiety it reaches something that cognitive approaches alone cannot. Somatic therapy works directly with the nervous system state underlying anxious thoughts rather than managing the thoughts themselves. This is particularly effective for anxiety that has nervous system roots — where the body is chronically activated regardless of what the mind knows. Many clients notice a meaningful shift in their baseline anxiety level through somatic work, not just in-the-moment symptom relief.
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CBT works at the level of thought — challenging anxious thinking patterns and building coping skills. This is genuinely valuable and for many people produces real change. When anxiety persists despite CBT, it usually means the anxiety is being generated below the level of thought — in the nervous system, in early relational patterns, in the body's learned state of vigilance. Somatic Experiencing and Post Induction Therapy work at those deeper levels, which is why many people who have plateaued with CBT find somatic work moves things that cognitive work couldn't reach.
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For many people, particularly those whose anxiety has nervous system and relational roots, genuine healing is possible — not just symptom management. This doesn't necessarily mean the complete absence of anxiety, which is neither realistic nor desirable since some anxiety is a healthy part of human experience. What it means is a fundamental shift in your nervous system's baseline — moving from chronic vigilance to genuine ease, with anxiety arising appropriately in response to real challenges rather than as a constant background state.
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Yes — relational anxiety and attachment-based anxiety are central to the work I do. Fear of abandonment, anxious attachment patterns, the anxiety that arises around intimacy or conflict — these are among the most common presentations I work with. They tend to have roots in early relational experiences and respond particularly well to the combination of somatic and relational approaches, which address both the nervous system activation and the underlying attachment wounds simultaneously.
Anxiety that has been with you this long deserves more than coping strategies.
If something here resonated, if you recognized your anxiety in these descriptions, I'd love to connect. Schedule a free 20-minute consultation and we'll talk about what you're carrying and whether a somatic approach might be what's been missing.