What is anxiety?
Everyone experiences some anxiety. A certain amount is healthy, and in children, developmentally normal. It becomes a problem when it starts interfering with life: work, school, relationships, sleep, and reaching your goals.
What it looks like
For some people anxiety shows up as avoidance, procrastination or overthinking. Sometimes it's physical like having a ball in the throat or tightness in your chest. Sometimes it comes out with rituals like handwashing or even repeatedly asking for reassurance. Anxiety comes out in many ways.
What we treat
Generalized anxiety, panic disorder, OCD, social anxiety, health anxiety, performance anxiety, specific phobias, and stress and burnout.
If restricted eating or ARFID is also part of what you're navigating, see our ARFID and selective eating page.
How we work with adults
For anxiety and OCD, there are evidence-based approaches. We follow them. Treatment is structured, practical, and active. You won't just talk about anxiety, you'll work on it.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) helps you identify the thought patterns and behaviors that keep anxiety going and change them. You'll learn practical skills to challenge thoughts and respond differently to situations that trigger anxiety.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) takes a different angle than CBT. Rather than challenging anxious thoughts, you learn to have them without being controlled by them and keep moving toward what matters to you.
Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) is the gold-standard treatment for OCD and specific phobias. It involves gradually facing what you fear while resisting the urge to avoid or seek reassurance. It's demanding but it works.
Values Work is important too. Identifying - reminding yourself - of what matters most to you can give you the push to take tough actions to move through the anxiety.
How we work with children and teens
SPACE (Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions) is an approach for anxiety in children and adolescents ages 6-17, or sometimes young adults still living at home. Developed at the Yale Child Study Center, SPACE works with parents rather than the child directly. Research shows it significantly reduces childhood anxiety - often without the child ever attending a session.
If you're parenting an anxious child, you've probably adjusted your family's routines to help them feel safer - answering reassurance questions, avoiding certain places, staying nearby at bedtime. These accommodations come from love. They can also maintain anxiety. SPACE helps parents gradually reduce them in a structured way, while learning new ways to communicate confidence and support.
While SPACE is enough on its own for some children, others benefit from working directly with a therapist using ERP, CBT, or ACT. This is especially common for OCD, panic disorder, or specific phobias. We may also work with them individually, or combine both approaches.
What to expect
We start with a thorough assessment. For adults, we want to understand what's driving your anxiety, how it's showing up, and what's kept it going. For children, we assess your child's anxiety and how your family has been responding to it. From there we build a path forward together.