Services / Therapy for anxiety
Your anxiety is trying to tell you something.
Anxiety is exhausting to live with, especially when you can’t figure out what it’s actually about. It shows up uninvited, doesn’t respond to logic, and makes everything feel more uncertain. But anxiety is a signal. And signals, when we learn to read them, have something worth hearing.
Schedule a free consultation →Anxiety doesn’t always announce itself as anxiety.
Many of the people I work with have been anxious for so long that it feels like just who they are. It doesn’t have to be. Anxiety is a pattern that developed for reasons, and those reasons are worth understanding.
What anxiety can look like
How I work with anxiety
Understanding it, rather than silencing it.
My work draws on psychodynamic and attachment-based principles, where anxiety is understood to have a specific relationship to underlying feeling. When a genuine emotion begins to rise, particularly one that has been historically dangerous to experience, anxiety is what intercepts it. Rather than focusing on just soothing it, we go a layer deeper: what is your anxiety signaling, how did your experiences shape your nervous system’s sense of what is safe, and what feelings might be living just under the surface.
Beneath anxiety, there is almost always something else: grief that never found a place to land, anger that felt too dangerous to express, longing that carries an old memory of loss. The goal isn’t to make you someone who never feels anxious. It’s to develop a different relationship with anxiety, one where you can hear what it’s trying to say, rather than just trying to make it stop.
Anxiety often shows up in individual therapy. Read more about Nikole, or browse all services.
My approach →Who I work with
Anxious, quietly beneath
a composed exterior.
What to expect
Our work together
In early sessions we get to know you — the anxiety, your relationships, your history, when it shows up, and what your life has looked like around it.
As we get to know you better, we explore more of the patterns, stories, and relational histories that may be running the show. This is where meaningful work happens.
Over time, anxiety becomes less in charge. You respond rather than react, sit with uncertainty without dread or bracing, and stay in contact with what you actually want underneath the worry.
Anxiety therapy
Frequently asked questions
Can therapy actually help with anxiety?
Yes, and the research supports this. Psychodynamic therapy has a solid evidence base for treating anxiety, and it tends to produce changes that hold — because it addresses the underlying patterns rather than just the surface symptoms. What helps depends on what’s driving your anxiety, which is one of the things we’d explore together.
What if my anxiety isn’t "bad enough" for therapy?
Anxiety doesn’t have to be debilitating to be worth addressing. If it’s affecting your relationships, your work, your ability to rest, or the life you want to pursue — that’s enough. A lot of people wait until anxiety has gotten very loud before seeking help. You don’t have to wait.
Is depth-oriented anxiety therapy different from other approaches?
Many approaches to anxiety focus on the present: identifying anxious thought patterns, building coping skills, or working directly with triggers in the here and now. Those can be useful, especially for specific, well-defined situations. Depth-oriented therapy works differently. Rather than managing anxiety at the surface, we explore the underlying emotional patterns, relational histories, and character structure generating it. For people whose anxiety keeps returning despite other strategies, depth-oriented work often reaches something those approaches don’t.
Will we talk about my past?
Often, yes — though not in a way that feels disconnected from your present life. Attachment-based therapy is interested in how early experiences shaped the patterns you’re living out now. For many people, understanding where their anxiety was formed, and what it was originally responding to, is what finally makes change possible. We always follow your pace and readiness.
How long does anxiety therapy take?
That depends on the depth and roots of the anxiety. I typically work with people in longer-term therapy of at least six months, because lasting change takes time. Some people notice significant shifts within a few months; for others the work unfolds more gradually. How you’re feeling about the work is an ongoing, collaborative conversation between us.
Do you offer online anxiety therapy in California?
Yes. I offer telehealth sessions for anyone located in California through a secure video platform. Online anxiety therapy works very similarly to in-person sessions, and many clients find it equally valuable.
Next steps
Anxiety doesn’t have to run the show.
If you’re ready to understand what yours is really about, I’d be glad to hear from you. Reach out for a free no-pressure consultation. Offices in-person in Newport Beach and Fullerton, or online throughout California.
Schedule a free consultation →