Anxiety Counseling of Santa Cruz

Alan Strachan , Ph.D. (831) 685-3100

Is anxiety affecting the quality of your life? If so, then anxiety counseling could help you to become happier, more relaxed, and better able to achieve your goals.

I offer a practical, heart centered approach to:

Anxiety Counseling

Relationship difficulties

Improving self-esteem

Clarifying life purpose

Embodied spirituality

What is andxiety?

Anxiety is a feeling of worry, fear, nervousness or unease.

Anxiety -- often also referred to as “stress” -- is a normal part of life. Stress or anxiety can be helpful as a way of alerting us to pay attention to particular situations.

However, if you experience too much anxiety, too often, then the feelings can become overwhelming and can actually prevent you from paying attention and doing the things you need to do in order to help yourself.

Sometimes we can find ways on our own to reduce anxiety. But if anxiety is taking too much of your time and attention, and your attempts to relax are not working as well as you would like, then anxiety counseling could help you take the next step toward relaxation, health and accomplishing your goals.

Symptoms of anxiety

Anxiety is often accompanied by symptoms such as:

sweating
shortness of breath
increased heart rate
chest tightness
stomach discomfort and diarrhea
insomnia
difficulty concentrating
restlessness and irritability
imagining the worst outcome for every problem in life

Anxiety counseling can be effective in reducing both the frequency and intensity of each of these symptoms.

Different kinds of anxiety:

Here are some of the ways that intense and recurrent anxiety has been classified:

Generalized anxiety is excessive, ongoing worry that is unrelated to a particular event or situation.
A panic attack is an experience of extreme anxiety, often accompanied by symptoms such as a racing heart, sweating, dizziness, shaking, light-headedness, tightness in the chest and fear of losing control.
Social phobia is a disproportionate anxiety about interactions with other people. Often it is characterized by a fear of being embarrassed or humiliated while in social situations.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is an ongoing psychological reaction to an extremely frightening or life-threatening event, such as experiencing or seeing an accident; military combat; experiencing a natural disaster; being the victim of rape, assault or robbery; or enduring physical, sexual or emotional abuse. PTSD symptoms may include re-experiencing the stressful event through flashbacks and recurrent dreams, avoiding reminders of the event, insomnia, emotional numbness, hypervigilance, and being easily startled or frightened.

anxiety: counseling can be effective in treating these and other types of anxiety.

How can anxiety: counseling help?

Anxiety counseling can help you to develop and implement strategies for reducing anxiety:

Become more aware of the underlying causes of your anxiety
A Learn specific stress management techniques so you can reduce your anxiety
Examine your overall lifestyle to determine whether there are ways to reduce your stress
Become more calm and confident when responding to anxiety-provoking events
Be more realistic about what you can and cannot control, and learn to focus positively on changing what you can

For Anxiety Counseling in Santa Cruz

Alan Strachan , Ph.D.
(831) 685-3100

Whatever you can dream, begin it. Boldness has genius,
power and magic in it. ~ Goethe