Anxiety Treatment in Louisiana
Specialized Anxiety Treatment in Lake Charles and Throughout Louisiana via Telehealth
What is an Anxiety Disorder?
Anxiety is your brain and body's response to perceived danger or uncertainty. It is an alarm system that is supposed to get your attention. If you're walking through the woods and hear something moving behind you, anxiety is useful, because it makes you stop and pay attention.
Anxiety disorders are different. The problem isn't that the alarm system exists. The problem is that it starts going off too often, too intensely, or in situations where it isn't particularly helpful. Over time, this can interfere with your life, relationships, work, or ability to do the things you want to do.
There are several different anxiety disorders. Generalized Anxiety Disorder tends to involve persistent worry about multiple areas of life. Social anxiety centers around fear of scrutiny, embarrassment, or negative evaluation. Panic disorder involves recurrent panic attacks and often a growing fear of the sensations associated with panic. Specific phobias involve intense fear of particular situations or objects. Agoraphobia involves avoidance of situations where escape or access to help may feel difficult. Health anxiety can involve a persistent fear of having or developing a serious illness, often accompanied by checking, researching, or seeking reassurance.
The specific subject of the anxiety can vary quite a bit. However, what these problems have in common is that anxiety begins to negatively impact your daily functioning.
How is anxiety treated?
There are a number of effective treatments for anxiety disorders, and the right approach depends on what triggers your anxiety and the behaviors that maintain it, as well as other factors such as your treatment history and the severity of your symptoms.
I primarily use Exposure Therapy, Metacognitive Therapy (MCT), and principles from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) in my work with anxiety.
Generally speaking, the best available treatments for anxiety are rooted in Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) principles. Approaching treatments from an CBT lens involves focusing on thoughts and behaviors that sustain and perpetuate symptoms. Exposure therapy, Metacognitive Therapy, and ACT are all grounded in CBT principles, and have demonstrated effectiveness in treating anxiety disorders.
Exposure Therapy for Anxiety
Exposure therapy is one of the most well-established treatments for anxiety disorders. The idea behind it is fairly simple: if you repeatedly avoid something because it makes you anxious, you never get the opportunity to learn what happens when you approach it. However, if you deliberately approaching feared situations, sensations, thoughts, or activities rather than continuing to organize your life around avoiding them, your nervous system learns to respond differently.
Exposure exercises can look very different depending on the anxiety disorder. For someone with a fear of flying, exposure might involve gradually working toward getting on an airplane. For someone with social anxiety, it might involve speaking up in a meeting, initiating a conversation, making a mistake in front of someone, or doing something else that creates the possibility of being judged. For someone with panic disorder, exposure may involve intentionally experiencing physical sensations such as an increased heart rate or dizziness that have become associated with panic. For someone with agoraphobia, treatment might involve gradually returning to places or situations that have been avoided because they feel difficult to escape.
Modern exposure therapy places a great deal of emphasis on learning. Through repeated experience, you have the opportunity to discover that anxiety itself isn't dangerous, that feared outcomes may not occur, and that you can do things you previously believed you couldn't do while anxious. Exposure therapy is strongly supported across anxiety-related disorders, although it remains underused in routine clinical practice, primary due to a lack of clinicians trained in this approach.
Metacognitive Therapy
You may have heard of Cognitive Therapy or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy before. Metacognitive Therapy (MCT) is similar in that it focuses on cognitive processes and our thoughts. However, MCT takes a different approach that CBT by focuses not on the content of thoughts or beliefs, but on how we relate to and engage with them.
At the core of MCT is the belief that many of the psychological problems that we experience are at least partially driven by cognitive processes (rather than specific cognitions). These processes include worry, rumination, as well as attempts to suppress or get rid of unwanted thoughts and internal experiences.
Helping clients with these problems is a two pronged approach in MCT. It involves equipping folks with new tools for related to thoughts in a different way. It also involves helping people change unhelpful beliefs that they have about worry and rumination (called metacognitive beliefs), such as thinking that worry and rumination are uncontrollable, that they are useful, or that they are dangerous.
What’s the difference between anxiety and an anxiety disorder?
Anxiety is a normal and necessary part of being human. It's the mind and body's response to perceived threat or uncertainty, and in the right context it's useful. It sharpens focus, motivates action, and signals when something deserves attention. Everyone experiences anxiety, and experiencing it doesn't mean anything is wrong.
An anxiety disorder is different not because the anxiety feels different, but because of what it does to your life. Anxiety becomes a disorder when it is persistent, disproportionate to the actual situation, and begins to drive avoidance — when it starts organizing your decisions, shrinking your world, or demanding significant time and mental energy to manage. The distinction isn't about how intense the anxiety feels in a given moment but about the pattern over time and the degree to which it interferes with the things that matter to you.
What anxiety disorders do you treat?
The most common anxiety disorders include:
Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) — persistent, hard-to-control worry spanning multiple areas of life (health, relationships, work, finances), often accompanied by physical tension, fatigue, and trouble concentrating
Social Anxiety Disorder — significant fear of scrutiny or judgment in social or performance situations, leading to avoidance or considerable distress
Panic Disorder — recurrent unexpected panic attacks and ongoing fear about future attacks or their consequences, often with associated avoidance of situations perceived as triggering
Specific Phobia — intense, disproportionate fear of a particular object or situation that meaningfully interferes with daily functioning. Examples include fear of flying, needles/blood, animals, driving, vomit/vomiting, and heights.
Agoraphobia — fear and avoidance of situations where escape might be difficult, or help unavailable, in the event of panic or incapacitation
Health Anxiety (Illness Anxiety Disorder) — persistent preoccupation with having or developing a serious illness, with reassurance-seeking or checking behaviors that provide only temporary relief
Do I have an anxiety disorder or OCD?
Anxiety and OCD are closely related, and it's common to have one misidentified as the other. OCD almost always involves significant anxiety and is frequently mistaken for generalized anxiety, health anxiety, or panic disorder. The difference isn't really about how anxious a person feels. It's about how that person experiences the anxiety, as well as what keeps the anxiety going.
OCD is characterized by obsessions, which are intrusive, unwanted, or distressing thoughts, images, or urges that feel threatening or deeply wrong, and compulsions, which are mental or behavioral rituals performed to neutralize the distress those thoughts produce. The anxiety in OCD is a response to the obsession, and it tends to follow a recognizable cycle: intrusive thought, spike in distress, compulsion or avoidance, temporary relief, and then the thought returns.
Generalized anxiety, by contrast, tends to involve worry about realistic concerns that feels somewhat proportionate to the situation, even if the worry is excessive. The content is usually about everyday life (relationships, health, finances, performance) rather than intrusive thoughts that feel alien or morally threatening.
Other anxiety disorders might be better thought of as driven by phobic reactions, which are anxiety responses to more immediate threats, rather than hypothetical or future-oriented ones (such as in OCD).
These distinctions matter when it comes to treatment. Anxiety disorders such as Generalized Anxiety Disorder and specific phobias, as well as OCD, can all be treated effectively, but approaches that help with one may not help the other.
Anxiety Therapy in Lake Charles and Throughout Louisiana
Finding a therapist who provides evidence-based, targeted anxiety treatment can be difficult, particularly if you live outside of one of Louisiana's larger metropolitan areas. I provide in-person anxiety therapy in Lake Charles as well as telehealth throughout Louisiana. This makes evidence-based anxiety treatment available to clients in places like Lafayette, Baton Rouge, New Orleans, Shreveport, Alexandria, Monroe, Ruston, and smaller or rural communities without requiring a long drive to a larger city.
Research comparing therapist-guided remote CBT with in-person CBT has found little to no difference in treatment effectiveness across a range of conditions, including anxiety and related disorders. NIMH likewise recognizes psychotherapy delivered through telehealth as an effective option for conditions such as GAD, panic disorder, and social anxiety.
Learn more about Telehealth for Anxiety and OCD
Why Evidence-Based Anxiety Treatment Matters
Not all therapy is created equally.
There are lots of approaches to treating anxiety. That doesn't necessarily mean that every approach is equally effective.
Anxiety is one of the most common reasons people seek therapy, and it is easy to fall into the assumption that treating anxiety simply means talking about what's stressful, learning some relaxation techniques, and developing better coping skills. Those things can certainly have a place in therapy, but if the problem is being maintained by avoidance, reassurance seeking, safety behaviors, persistent worry, or attempts to control anxiety, then effective treatment needs to address those behaviors directly. This is especially important for people who have already been to therapy and feel like they understand their anxiety very well but are still struggling with it.
Unfortunately, traditional forms of talk therapy (which myself and many other graduate-level therapists are taught in grad-school), may not fulfill these requirements. What’s more, you likely already know everything that simply talking about your anxiety might yield. E.g., you may already know where your anxiety came from, understand your childhood experiences, and recognize that your thoughts and behaviors aren’t rational.
The reality is that insight isn't typically the missing piece. Usually, folks need specific interventions (often more behavioral in nature) that target anxiety head on, rather than by talking about it.
The best, most scientifically supported treatments for anxiety are rooted in principles of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, such as Exposure Therapy and Metacognitive Therapy. These approaches focus on processes and behaviors that maintain anxiety, not solely on where it comes from.
Learn more about the importance of evidence-based treatments.
Frequently Asked Questions about Anxiety Therapy
What if I’ve already tried therapy?
That is very common. I often work with people who have a long time in therapy and have gained plenty of insight into their anxiety without seeing all of the changes they were hoping for.
If previous therapy focused primarily on talking about anxiety, understanding its origins, or learning general coping skills, a more targeted approach may be worth considering.
Do I need medication to treat anxiety?
Psychotherapy, medication, or a combination of the two can be appropriate depending on the particular anxiety disorder and the person's circumstances and preferences. I provide psychotherapy and do not prescribe medication, but I am happy to coordinate with your physician or other medical provider when appropriate
Do you provide telehealth throughout Louisiana?
Yes. I provide secure online therapy to adults anywhere in Louisiana, as well as in-person appointments in Lake Charles.
Can anxiety actually be cured?
Anxiety is a normal human emotion, so the goal isn't to eliminate anxiety from your life. Effective treatment is about changing the patterns that make anxiety excessive, persistent, and restrictive. Evidence based treatments like exposure therapy annd MCT have substantial evidence for anxiety disorders, and many people experience significant improvement with appropriate treatment.
Will exposure make my anxiety worse?
Exposure can be uncomfortable, but the goal isn't throwing you into the most frightening situation imaginable and telling you to deal with it.
Exposures are planned collaboratively, approached very gradually, and tailored to the particular problem. The goal is to change the relationship you have with the feared situation and reduce the avoidance and safety behaviors that keep the fear going.
What if I don’t know whether I have anxiety or OCD?
That's okay. Anxiety and OCD can look similar, and it isn't always obvious where one ends and the other begins. An assessment can help determine what pattern you're actually dealing with and what treatment makes the most sense.
Ready to start?
I offer specialized, science-backed treatment for anxiety disorders in-person in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and online throughout Louisiana. Reach out now to learn more or to schedule a free consultation.