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Anxious Teens & Young Adults​

What's Happening Right Now Is Real

We are in the middle of a teen and young adult anxiety epidemic. The pressure young people carry today — academic, social, digital, cultural — is unlike anything previous generations faced. And it is showing up everywhere: in the school avoidance, the panic attacks, the friendships that feel impossibly hard, the job interview that sends someone into a spiral for days.

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There is also something else worth naming. So many young adults today grew up connecting through screens — texting, scrolling, chatting. And then the world asked them to walk into a classroom, an office, a party, a relationship — and figure out how to be present with actual people in real time. That gap is real. It is not a personal failing. It is something an entire generation is quietly navigating. 

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When Anxiety Becomes Something More

Left unaddressed, anxiety has a way of deepening. The teen who started out dreading tests begins avoiding school. The young adult who felt awkward at parties stops leaving the house. The constant weight of worry,

over time, can slide into depression — not because something new went wrong, but because carrying that

much for that long eventually takes everything out of a person.

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And underneath a lot of anxiety is something older than the anxiety itself. Trauma — even the kind that doesn't look dramatic from the outside — wires the nervous system for threat. A young person who experienced instability, loss, humiliation, or chronic stress may find their body still on alert long after the danger has passed. That is not a character flaw. That is how trauma works. And it is exactly what therapy can help untangle.

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What Anxious People Actually Need

Here is something most people get backwards — anxiety lives in the body before it lives in the mind. Telling

an anxious person to "think differently" or "just stop worrying" doesn't work because the alarm isn't coming

from their thoughts. It's coming from their nervous system.  The most effective work with anxious teens and young adults focuses less on trying to control the anxious mind and more on learning to regulate the anxious body. When the body learns it is safe, the mind follows.  This is where I come in.

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How I Work With Anxious Teens & Young Adults

Anxiety is one of my deepest areas of expertise — and one of my genuine passions. I have worked with anxious young people as long as I have been in practice and I still find this work exciting. Because anxious teens and young adults are almost always motivated. They don't want to feel this way. They are ready to learn and they respond beautifully when given the right tools.

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Here is what that looks like:

Body-based skills — learning to recognize anxiety in the body before it takes over, and using breath, movement, and grounding to regulate the nervous system from the inside out. Less about quieting the mind, more about calming the body first.

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Mindfulness — not as a buzzword, but as a real practice. Learning to observe anxious thoughts without being pulled under by them.

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DBT skills — practical, proven tools for managing overwhelming emotions, tolerating distress, and building a

life that actually feels livable.

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Art therapy — for those who struggle to find words for what they're feeling, creative expression opens doors that talking alone cannot.

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Trauma-informed care — when anxiety has deeper roots, we work carefully to address what's underneath —

not just the symptoms on the surface.

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Hypnotherapy — sometimes the part of us driving the anxiety doesn't respond to logic or willpower. Hypnotherapy works beneath that — helping the nervous system reset patterns that have become automatic.

It is not what you see on television. It is a calm, focused state that allows deeper work to happen — and for many anxious teens and young adults, it is one of the most effective tools we have.

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IFS (Internal Family Systems) — helping young people understand the different parts of themselves —

including the anxious part — with curiosity and compassion rather than shame.

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