Anxiety & Behavioral Health ServicesWho we serve
Individual therapy shaped around your needs.
ABHS provides individualized psychotherapy for adults age 18 and older. Treatment is tailored to each client’s concerns, circumstances, and goals.
Individual sessions
ABHS does not conduct couples or family therapy. Partners or family members may sometimes join a session to provide information, receive education, or support the therapy process.
Medication coordination
ABHS clinicians do not prescribe medication. With permission, clinicians can coordinate care with other professionals who prescribe medication.
Understanding anxiety
Your body’s built-in alarm system.
Anxiety is designed to focus attention, activate the body, and motivate protective action when danger may be present.
Everyone experiences anxiety from time to time. It becomes problematic when it is chronic, extremely intense, causes significant distress, or interferes with activities, relationships, opportunities, and everyday functioning.
Thoughts
Attention becomes fixed on a possible danger, feared outcome, or uncertainty.
Body sensations
Shortness of breath, increased heart rate, sweating, trembling, dizziness, and other alarm sensations may occur.
Behavior
A person may avoid, escape, seek reassurance, or organize life around preventing feared outcomes.
Impact
Treatment may help when anxiety restricts choices or keeps a person from participating fully in life.
Types of problematic anxiety
Panic Attacks
Sudden episodes of intense fear that peak in a few minutes or less and involve strong body sensations such as heart racing, shortness of breath, light-headedness, chills, and derealization.
Panic Disorder
Repeated panic attacks that occur out of the blue (without warning) and lead a person to fear the next attack or its imagined consequences (for example, heart attack or fainting).
Agoraphobia
Avoidance of any situations in which escape or obtaining help might be difficult or embarrassing if a panic attack or other bodily problem were to occur. In its most severe form, people become afraid to leave home at all. Often, driving (especially on freeways) and other traveling is avoided or endured with distress.
Generalized Anxiety Disorder
Excessive, persistent worry about unlikely bad things that could occur.
Social Anxiety Disorder
Discomfort in social interactions with other people due to fear of making mistakes or being judged negatively that leads to avoidance of these situations and negatively impacts social connectedness.
Specific Phobias
Fears of particular insects, animals, natural disasters, situations (such as flying, heights, elevators), or blood/injections that interfere in full quality of living.
Illness Anxiety Disorder
Sometimes called hypochondriasis, or health anxiety, this includes distressing fear that physical symptoms (such as a headache or dizziness) indicate that one is suffering from a severe medical condition, even when medical testing or examination shows no evidence of this.
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Repeatedly re-experiencing a traumatic event that actually occurred (such as an act of violence or a natural disaster) through nightmares, flashbacks, or periods of intense fear, accompanied by other symptoms (including avoidance and increased physiological arousal, as well as changes in mood and thinking). PTSD is not classified as an anxiety disorder because it involves many other cognitive and emotional experiences aside from anxiety, but anxiety is often one key component of PTSD.
Understanding OCD
Obsessions, compulsions, and the cycle between them.
Obsessive-compulsive disorder involves persistent unwanted thoughts, images, or urges and repetitive behaviors or mental acts intended to reduce distress or prevent a feared outcome.
People with OCD may feel driven to perform compulsions even when they recognize that the thoughts or actions do not make sense. The cycle can significantly interfere with daily life, relationships, and well-being.
Common obsessions
- Contamination or disgust fears
- Fear of causing or failing to prevent harm
- Unwanted sexual, violent, or taboo thoughts
- Scrupulosity and moral fears
- A need for symmetry or things to feel “just right”
Common compulsions
- Washing, cleaning, or sanitizing
- Checking locks, appliances, or completed tasks
- Seeking reassurance
- Mental reviewing, neutralizing, or repeating
- Ordering, arranging, counting, or avoiding
Exposure and Response Prevention
ERP is a form of cognitive behavioral therapy and is considered a leading behavioral treatment for OCD. It involves gradually approaching feared situations, objects, or thoughts while resisting the urge to perform compulsions. Over time, clients can learn that distress is tolerable, feared consequences may not occur, and anxiety can pass without rituals.
How treatment works
Active strategies practiced in and between sessions.
Therapist and client work together to understand the problem, select useful strategies, and design practice between sessions. Treatment may involve educational material, structured exercises, reading, or workbooks.
CBT
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy focuses on present-day thoughts, emotions, behavior, avoidance, interactions, and environment.
Exposure
Clients gradually practice facing feared situations or sensations to build confidence and learn that fear is temporary and manageable.
ERP
For OCD, exposure is paired with response prevention: refraining from rituals so new learning can occur.
Wondering whether ABHS may be a fit?
You do not need to determine the right treatment approach on your own. The intake process begins with a conversation about your concerns and what you are looking for.