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What is the Best Anxiety Therapy in Los Angeles?
Welcome! I'm Oliver Drakeford an anxiety expert, and licensed psychotherapist in Los Angeles with a decade of experience. My office is located in the heart of West Hollywood on Santa Monica Blvd.
The Best Anxiety Therapist?
The best therapist for anxiety is one who not only understands your struggle but also empowers you with a new "playbook" to actively challenge and transform your relationship with anxiety, rather than just manage it. This often means finding a therapist who is direct, insightful, and equips you to break anxiety's hidden rules.
I've been providing therapy for anxiety for close to a decade, so when searching for the "best" anxiety therapist, I highly suggest you look beyond traditional approaches that merely offer coping mechanisms. Instead, seek a modern, dynamic, and expert guide who focuses on agency and solutions
More Reading On Anxiety Therapy:
What Is the Most Effective Therapy for Anxiety?
The most effective therapy for anxiety is a mental health approach that moves beyond temporary coping mechanisms and techniques to actively challenge and dismantle the core engine that may be driving your anxiety.
I find that this approach is more empowering as you fundamentally rewrite your relationship with fear and worry. This involves a direct, insightful, and evidence-based methodology that fosters lasting change, regardless of whether you struggle with social anxiety, worrying, or generalized anxiety disorder.
While many therapies offer valuable support, true effectiveness in anxiety treatment comes from addressing the root patterns that keep you stuck. It's about more than just feeling "calmer"; it's about transforming your internal landscape so you can live by your own rules, not anxiety's.
Is It Worth Seeing a Therapist for Anxiety?
Absolutely!Seeing a therapist for anxiety is profoundly worth it, especially when your anxiety dictates your choices, shrinks your world, or keeps you feeling stuck, despite your best efforts to manage it alone.
It's about investing in a transformative process that rewrites anxiety's rulebook, empowering you to live a life on your own terms.
Many high-achievers in Los Angeles may find themselves battling anxiety daily, often believing they should be able to "handle it" on their own with the 'right' tools. But when anxiety starts making you play small , demanding control , or convincing you that every little worry is an urgent priority, it's a clear sign that a powerful intervention can change the game.
Book a free consultation with a clinical expert and licensed therapist here:
Anxiety, overthinking, and worry are some of the more common symptoms clients come to seek help with in my private practice, and I've been helping people in Los Angeles with it for a decade as a marriage and family therapist.
In this article, I hope to shed some light on why we worry, how anxiety hooks us, and how we can begin to loosen its grip using strategies I share with clients.
Who is the best therapist to help with anxiety?
The best therapist to help with your anxiety, is the person you can connect with, trust and who ideally is experienced in their specific approach or modality. It's a personal decision! I'm Oliver Drakeford, a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist based in West Hollywood, Los Angeles, with nearly a decade of experience helping individuals overcome anxiety.
My approach recognizes that worry and overthinking, though common, often serve as barriers to deeper emotional healing. By combining psychoanalytic insights with practical strategies and some CBT (cognitive behavioral) I guide my clients to identify and interrupt anxiety loops, challenge misleading thoughts, distracting symptoms, and safely engage with underlying emotions.
My goal is to empower you to move beyond worry and anxiety, its needs and demands, creating space for healthier emotional connections with yourself and others. Whether through in-person sessions at my West Hollywood office or virtual therapy across California, I'm dedicated to providing compassionate, personalized support tailored to your needs.
How Anxiety Therapy Can Help You in Los Angeles
Anxiety can feel overwhelming, but therapy offers proven ways to regain control and peace in your life.
In my West Hollywood practice, therapy for stress, uncertainty, worries and anxious distress is tailored specifically to your unique experience, blending psychoanalytic insight with practical, actionable strategies. Together, we'll uncover the deeper emotional patterns fueling your worries, interrupt repetitive anxiety loops, and equip you with coping skills to manage everyday stressors effectively. My goal is to help you break free from the exhausting cycle of anxiety, creating lasting emotional balance and healthier relationships.
In anxiety therapy sessions, you'll learn to recognize when anxious thoughts are misleading or magnified, allowing you to confront them safely and directly. By gently addressing the underlying cognitive behavioral and emotional ques that anxiety often masks, therapy can reduce your reliance on worry as a coping mechanism. Clients frequently report feeling more grounded, confident, and capable of facing life's uncertainties after engaging in therapy.
Whether meeting in-person at my West Hollywood office or online across California, anxiety therapy provides essential support for moving beyond worry toward genuine relief and meaningful emotional growth.
THE
PARADOX
OF WORRY
“If worrying makes me feel so awful, why do I keep doing it?”
The “paradox of worry” is that it might seem to reduce anxiety in the moment, or at the very least gives us a false sense of control as we're mulling over possibilities and scenarios. However we're likely to find that worry is covering more more intense feelings that we're not wanting to get in touch with. So while worry can be productive, it ultimately prolongs and amplifies anxiety.
Identifying this cycle and helping you to confront what worry is shielding them from—is a crucial step toward real relief.
Understanding How Anxiety Works
The Worry Shield
Worry is a cognitive process, not an emotional one. Rather than fully imagining a threat (which triggers a stronger emotional reaction), we intellectually dwell on it with worry. This “cognitive detour” means we never confront our deeper fears or feelings head-on.
Feelings such as sadness, grief, or panic remain locked away, unaddressed. Because we never truly face them, we can’t learn to soothe them or discover what they need (e.g., connection, reassurance, action).
The Payoff Of Worry
Worry can trick us into feeling as though we’re preventing bad outcomes (“If I keep worrying about it, maybe it won’t happen”). This is sometimes called magical thinking.
Each time you use worry to sidestep a bigger emotional surge, it “works” just enough to convince you it’s a good idea. That reward turns into a habit—almost like pressing the same lever to get relief again and again.
The Trap Of Worry
On some level, worrying feels safe, perhaps even practical, but it blocks healing and emotional processing.. By clinging to worry for relief, you never fully process the real source of distress.
Worry primes the brain to look for more problems, adding to the cycle of hypervigilance. Because it provides short-lived comfort, worry becomes an ingrained behavior, and simple willpower (“just stop worrying!”) doesn’t break the cycle.
Effective Therapy For Worry in West Hollywood
If this is connecting with you, and you're struggling with worry, anxiety or overthinking, and live in California, or Los Angeles, effective treatment is available. You can make a free consultation call with me or one of my colleagues and we'll answer your questions and, if it feels right, set up your first session.
THE FIVE
RULES OF
ANXIETY
Anxiety has rules that it forces you to follow.
ANXIETY THERAPY HELPS FREE YOU FROM THE CONSTRAINTS OF ANXIETY
The “paradox of worry” is that it might seem to reduce anxiety in the moment, or at the very least gives us a false sense of control as we're mulling over possibilities and scenarios. However we're likely to find that worry is covering more more intense feelings that we're not wanting to get in touch with. So while worry can be productive, it ultimately prolongs and amplifies anxiety.
Identifying this cycle and helping you to confront what worry is shielding them from—is a crucial step toward real relief.
Rule #1 The Smoke Alarm Rule
We treat every anxious thought as though it’s a genuine emergency alert, like a smoke alarm that always signals fire—even when there’s no real danger.
This leads to hypervigilance, where people feel compelled to analyze and react to every little fear. In reality, many of these “alarms” are false positives that keep us unnecessarily on edge.
Rule #2 The Boomerang Principle
Trying to shove anxiety away can actually make it bounce back harder—much like a boomerang returns when thrown.
The more you insist on eliminating discomfort, the more it seems to fight for your attention. Paradoxically, learning to acknowledge your anxious feelings often makes them less overwhelming.
Rule #3 The First Day Of School Illusion
Anxiety convinces people they lack the internal resources to handle tough situations—forgetting the many times they’ve managed difficulties before. They rely heavily on external reassurance, believing, “I can’t let anything bad happen because I just can’t cope.” In reality, they’ve already survived countless challenges, proving they’re more capable than they think..
Rule #4 Every Rumble Is The Big One
Any slight sign of trouble—a racing heart, a sudden noise—triggers thoughts of catastrophic outcomes. It’s like hearing a rumble and instantly assuming it’s the worst earthquake ever.
By magnifying every minor cue into a crisis, anxiety keeps you in a near-constant state of alarm.
Rule #5 We're Under Attack
This overarching stance has people seeing daily life as a war zone, modifying their choices to stay “safe.”
They avoid certain places, activities, or even thoughts to guard against what they perceive as ongoing threats. The result is a restrictive, exhausting existence governed by a team of fear rather than actual risk..
GET YOUR ANXIETY THERAPY PDF
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Q1: How can therapy help me stop worrying and overthinking?
A: Therapy can help you break the cycle of worry and overthinking by addressing the "Paradox of Worry" and the "Anxiety Loop." We'll work together to recognize how worry provides temporary relief but ultimately prolongs anxiety. Through our sessions, you'll learn to distinguish between genuine concerns ("signals") and unnecessary worries ("noise"), and develop strategies to challenge anxious thoughts
Q2: What approach do you use in treating anxiety?
Our approach involves a three-layered strategy:
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Recognizing and reshaping the anxious mindset
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Accepting and allowing deeper emotions to surface
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Changing behavior and attitudes by developing new coping strategies
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We focus on moving from a "protect and defend" mode to an "accept and allow" mindset, helping you face and process emotions more effectively - also useful with depression therapy too.
Q3: I've tried to stop worrying before, but it hasn't worked. How is your therapy different?
A: Our therapy addresses the root causes of anxiety, not just its symptoms. We may explore "Ten Rules of Anxiety" above to see if they apply to you - if they don't there will be others keep your trapped in anxious thinking.
Unlike approaches like CBT that rely solely on willpower or center on avoidance, we work on your anxiety disorder by changing your relationship with anxiety. This includes understanding the payoffs of worrying and learning to tolerate uncertainty, which can lead to more lasting change
Q4: How long does anxiety therapy typically take to show results?
A: The duration of therapy varies for each individual. However, many clients start noticing changes in their thinking patterns and anxiety levels within the first few sessions.
As we progress through the three phases of treatment - reshaping mindset, emotional processing, and including the behavior change - you'll likely experience gradual improvements. Remember, therapy is a process, and consistent engagement often leads to more sustainable results1