Help for Fears, Phobias, and Failure to Launch in Carpinteria, CA

Social Anxiety Disorder, also called social phobia, feels like overwhelming fear or unease about social situations due to concerns about how you will be perceived by others. This distress causes social avoidance and can severely impact life satisfaction and normal development in children and adults due to the nature of avoidance of experiences that encourage growth. Untreated social anxiety may lead to depression, isolation, and limited career opportunities. We seek to understand the root of the social anxiety with exploration of emotional and relational conflicts. To help sufferers learn to approach life rather than retreat, we treat social phobia with Exposure-Based CBT.

Specific Phobias are an anxiety disorder that include fears of particular objects or situations. Examples include fear of heights, flying, and fear vomiting (emetophobia). The feared object or situation triggers anxious distress and rumination on the 'what ifs.' Specific phobias are maintained or kept alive, so to speak, with avoidance behavior. We treat phobias with Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), a gradual exposure therapy.

Technically referred to as Highly Dependent Adult Children, "Failure to Launch" is a psychosocial condition in which adults struggle to achieve independence from their parents. Untreated anxiety disorders and lack of belief in one's abilities may contribute to the risk of Failure to Launch. Compassionate and effective therapy is available to teens and parents to reduce the risk of children becoming clinically highly dependent. In addition to working with youth, we offer parent-based therapy for parents of adult children with Failure to Launch.