THERAPY FOR ANXIETY IN CALIFORNIA & FLORIDA

You and your anxiety therapist will collaborate to create a plan to lower your anxiety. If there was a one-size-fits-all approach that truly worked for everyone, we promise we’d tell you. Better yet, we’d create an app and retire. But anxiety is so personal and tricky, it really does need a collaborative, holistic approach. You can read more about what holistic therapy is above or on our holistic therapy page.

We really wish we knew. Because your situation, symptoms, and life look different than other people’s, we can’t know until we’ve worked with you for at least a few sessions. We can tell you that most people work with us for 6-18 months. We also see much faster improvement and relief in people who are willing to make big lifestyle changes. The more committed you are to feeling better, the faster it will happen.

In short, no, you don’t have to do anything. Your therapist may or may not recommend you consult with a psychiatrist to help manage your anxiety. But nothing is a requirement. We respect your bodily autonomy and your comfort level with medication. We’re also not experts on prescriptions and will never recommend a particular one. That would be unethical, since we don’t have medical training.

Some people find medication helpful, but it’s not a magic potion that removes all anxiety from your life. Even with medication, you will likely still need some tools to manage. That’s what anxiety therapy is all about.

We go to every effort possible to make sure your therapy experience is as private as possible on our end. We use secure, HIPAA compliant platforms for all our communication with you and internally. We have double passwords on all our software and computers, and do regular HIPAA compliance reviews. We require that our therapists not work in a room with a smart listening device (such as Amazon Alexa, etc.) That said, we can only control things on our end.

Beyond technology, we adhere to the highest level of our professional confidentiality laws and ethics. A detailed breakdown of when confidentiality can be broken is provided in our intake paperwork. The long and short of it is that the only exceptions to confidentiality are as follows:

If you or someone you know is a danger to yourself or others.

If you disclose current abuse of neglect of someone under 18 or over 65. If you want to talk about something that happened to you or someone you know when they were a minor but they are no longer a minor, we do not have to report that.

Certain legal exceptions involving a judge-issued subpoena, and/or the Patriot Act. We really don’t want to be involved in any legal proceedings though, so we make every effort not to engage.

When you have given us written permission to talk to someone in an effort to support or pay for your care. The most common example of this is getting your permission to talk to a doctor or psychiatrist on your behalf, or allowing a relative to pay for your therapy.

When a therapist you previously worked with has behaved illegally or severely unethically, our practice has opted to reserve the right to report them.

Internally, we will discuss content of your sessions in our formal practice consultation groups. Just as doctors should regularly consult with other doctors to make sure you are getting the best care, we meet weekly to ensure the highest level of service. If and when we discuss what’s happening with your care, it is with the singular goal of providing you high quality service. Anything unrelated to helping you feel better will not be discussed.

Finally, some of our staff engage in graduate level teaching and training and may use highly edited and vague examples of people they have worked with. Details are always obscured or changed to protect your identity.

If you have questions or concerns about any of this, please talk to your anxiety therapist.

The more you’re willing to do to support your healing and growth, the quicker you’ll feel less anxious. For some people this means cutting out caffeine or alcohol, moving your body more, or setting boundaries with people and work. For some it might be a regular journaling or mindfulness practice. You and your therapist will create a plan together. That plan may involve some therapy homework. Because let’s be real, one hour a week won’t change your life the way seven hours will. The more you do outside session, the greater the impact of therapy will be to lower your anxiety.