Anxiety Therapy
You may be here because the worry won't quiet down. Because something about this season of life feels heavier than you expected, and you're not sure how much longer you can carry it on your own.
At Birth Feelings, anxiety therapy is grounded in the specific emotional landscape of becoming and being a parent. Whether you are navigating worry during pregnancy, postpartum racing thoughts, or anxiety that traces back to a difficult birth, this is a space where your experience is taken seriously.
Is anxiety therapy right for me?
Starting therapy is a personal and meaningful decision. You may be here because something about motherhood, birth, or your identity feels tender, overwhelming, or unresolved. You don't need a specific diagnosis to reach out. If any of the following sounds familiar, this space may be for you.
- Persistent worry that feels difficult to control or turn off
- Anxiety during pregnancy about birth, your baby's health, or your capacity to parent
- Postpartum anxiety: racing thoughts, intrusive thoughts, difficulty sleeping even when the baby sleeps
- A constant sense of dread or feeling that something terrible is about to happen
- Physical symptoms: tension, shortness of breath, heart racing, nausea
- Avoidance of situations, information, or relationships because of fear
- Anxiety that traces back to a difficult, traumatic, or unexpected birth experience
- Anxiety that is getting in the way of bonding with your baby or being present in your own life
What Is Anxiety Therapy?
Anxiety therapy provides a structured, evidence-informed path toward understanding what drives your anxiety, learning how to respond to it differently, and building the capacity to live more fully even when uncertainty or worry shows up.
The goal isn't to eliminate all anxiety. Some anxiety is useful: it keeps us safe, helps us prepare, signals that something matters. What therapy addresses is the anxiety that has become disproportionate, persistent, or limiting. The anxiety that wakes you at 3am. The anxiety that convinces you something is terribly wrong when the evidence says otherwise. Therapy gives you tools to work with your mind and body, rather than against them.
How Anxiety Therapy Works
At Birth Feelings, we draw on several evidence-based approaches, integrating what fits your specific needs, history, and how you process experience. You are not a passive recipient of a protocol. You are a collaborator in figuring out what works.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
CBT works by examining the relationship between your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Anxious thoughts drive anxious feelings, and avoidance reinforces the cycle. In CBT, you learn to identify the thought patterns fueling your anxiety and practice more balanced, realistic responses. For postpartum anxiety, this can help untangle the loop of intrusive thoughts, hyper-vigilance, and reassurance-seeking.
Psychodynamic Therapy
Together, we'll gently explore your past: your upbringing, your relationships, and the meaningful experiences that have shaped you. The goal is to understand what brought you here, and how those early patterns may still be echoing in your present. As therapy unfolds, you'll have space to process current challenges and find new ways to relate to yourself and others with more compassion and clarity.
EMDR Therapy
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a structured, short-term therapy that focuses on the traumatic memory and helps reprocess it so it is stored differently in the brain. This often leads to a reduction in the symptoms and challenges that memory brings up. For clients whose anxiety has a clear traumatic origin, including a frightening birth or medical emergency, EMDR often addresses the anxiety at its root in a way that talk therapy alone cannot.
Somatic and Body-Based Approaches
Anxiety lives in the body as well as the mind: tension, shallow breathing, a nervous system running at a heightened baseline. Somatic approaches work with body awareness, grounding, and nervous system regulation. In the postpartum period especially, when the body is still recovering and carrying the weight of a transformative experience, this kind of attuned, body-inclusive support can make a meaningful difference.
What Makes Anxiety in Pregnancy and Postpartum Different
Perinatal anxiety is not simply regular anxiety plus a baby. It has its own texture, its own triggers, and its own way of showing up in your body and your relationships. At Birth Feelings, this is the terrain we work in every day.
Intrusive thoughts about the baby.
Many new parents experience unwanted, distressing thoughts about harm coming to their infant. These thoughts feel deeply at odds with who you are. They are a recognized feature of postpartum anxiety, not evidence of being a bad parent. They deserve to be understood in that context.
Hyper-vigilance and hyperarousal.
The postpartum nervous system is often running at a heightened baseline: scanning for threat, struggling to settle, unable to rest even when the baby sleeps. This is not weakness. It is a dysregulated nervous system that needs attuned support.
Identity disruption.
Anxiety in new parenthood is often intertwined with a profound identity shift. The loss of a previous self, uncertainty about who you are now, and the gap between what you expected parenthood to feel like and what it actually does. This dimension is rarely addressed in standard anxiety treatment frameworks.
Birth trauma as a root driver.
For some clients, postpartum anxiety is directly downstream of a difficult or traumatic birth experience. Until the birth itself is processed, the anxiety often persists regardless of coping skills. At Birth Feelings, we hold all of these dimensions together.
What to Expect in Anxiety Therapy at Birth Feelings
Individual therapy with Dr. Branda is a compassionate space where your story is honored, without judgment or pressure to move on. The work adapts to you. Here is what the process generally looks like.
Understanding your full picture
In the beginning, we'll gently explore your past: your upbringing, your relationships, and the meaningful experiences that have shaped you. Together, we'll begin to understand what brought you here, and how those early patterns may still be echoing in your present.
Working through what's current
As therapy unfolds, you'll have space to process current challenges: birth trauma, identity in motherhood, emotional overwhelm, or moments when you feel lost, stuck, or alone. Dr. Branda will support you in building insight, developing tools for emotional regulation, and finding new ways to relate to yourself and others.
Online and in-person options
Anxiety therapy is available in-person at our Santa Monica office and via telehealth for clients in California and Illinois. Many clients find telehealth particularly accessible in the early postpartum period, when leaving the house with a newborn presents its own logistical challenge.
Session format
Sessions are 50 minutes and typically take place weekly or twice a week, depending on your needs and what you're working through. Dr. Branda is an out-of-network provider. A superbill is provided at the end of each month for you to submit to your insurance for potential reimbursement.
A realistic timeline
Many clients notice meaningful change within 8 to 12 sessions. Others benefit from longer-term support, particularly when anxiety intersects with birth trauma or complex perinatal mood concerns. In your first session, you'll discuss what a realistic timeline looks like for your situation.
This is your space
Anxiety therapy is not about achieving a permanent state of calm. It is about building a different relationship with anxiety, one where you have more capacity, more choice, and more room to live the life you want, even when anxiety is present. This is your space to feel seen, held, and strengthened.
Frequently Asked Questions About Anxiety Therapy
Anxiety therapy is a structured form of psychotherapy specifically designed to address anxiety: its triggers, its patterns, and the ways it interferes with daily life. While general talk therapy may explore a wide range of concerns, anxiety therapy uses targeted evidence-based approaches that have strong clinical research behind them for anxiety specifically. The focus is not just on understanding your anxiety but on changing your relationship to it.
The honest answer is: it depends on the nature of your anxiety and where it comes from. For anxiety without a clear traumatic root, CBT is the most studied and most effective starting point. For anxiety rooted in traumatic experience, including birth trauma, EMDR offers targeted processing that talk therapy alone often cannot replicate. Many effective therapists draw on multiple modalities rather than adhering strictly to one. What matters most, consistently across all research on psychotherapy, is the quality of the therapeutic relationship: whether you feel safe, understood, and able to engage honestly.
Birth Feelings specializes in anxiety that arises during and after the transition to parenthood. This includes anxiety during pregnancy, postpartum anxiety, fear of childbirth (tokophobia), anxiety related to a traumatic birth experience, and the generalized worry that often accompanies early parenthood. We work with the full spectrum, from subclinical stress and worry to clinically significant anxiety, always within the context of perinatal mental health.
The length of treatment varies depending on the type and severity of anxiety, your personal goals, and how frequently you attend sessions. Many clients notice meaningful change within 8 to 12 sessions. Others benefit from longer-term support, particularly when anxiety intersects with birth trauma, major life transitions, or complex perinatal mood concerns. In your first session, your therapist will discuss what a realistic timeline looks like for your specific situation.
Reaching out for professional support is not a sign of weakness. It is a recognition that anxiety has grown beyond what you should be managing alone. Five signs that it may be time:
- Anxiety is present most of the time, not just in response to specific stressors
- You are avoiding meaningful activities, relationships, or decisions because of anxiety
- Physical symptoms like insomnia, tension, or heart pounding are frequent and distressing
- Intrusive or frightening thoughts are occurring regularly and feel hard to dismiss
- Anxiety is affecting your relationship with your baby, your partner, or yourself
Dr. Branda is an out-of-network provider. A superbill is provided at the end of each month for you to submit to your insurance for potential reimbursement. Many PPO plans offer out-of-network mental health benefits. We recommend calling the member services number on your insurance card and asking about your out-of-network coverage for psychotherapy before your first appointment.
No referral is required. You can reach out to Birth Feelings directly to schedule a free 15-minute consultation. If your physician or midwife has recommended therapy and you would like to coordinate care, we are also happy to collaborate with your healthcare team.
Telehealth sessions via secure video platform are available for clients in California and Illinois. In-person sessions are available at our office in Santa Monica. Many clients find telehealth particularly accessible in the early postpartum period, when leaving the house with a newborn presents its own logistical challenge. Both formats offer the same depth of care.
The 3-3-3 rule is a simple grounding technique: name 3 things you can see, 3 sounds you can hear, and move 3 parts of your body. This activates present-moment sensory awareness, which can interrupt an anxious thought spiral long enough to create a moment of relief. Grounding techniques like this are useful tools. They help you manage anxiety in the moment. Therapy helps you understand and change the patterns that generate it in the first place.
Postpartum anxiety and postpartum depression are distinct conditions, though they can occur together. Postpartum depression typically involves persistent sadness, low motivation, and withdrawal. Postpartum anxiety is characterized by excessive worry, racing thoughts, difficulty sleeping beyond newborn-related disruption, physical tension, and sometimes intrusive thoughts about harm coming to the baby. Postpartum anxiety is significantly underdiagnosed because it can look like being a nervous new parent. If worry feels constant, overwhelming, or out of proportion to the situation, it is worth speaking with a professional.
Some degree of worry during pregnancy is normal. But anxiety that is persistent, intense, interferes with sleep or daily functioning, or involves intrusive thoughts about the baby's health or your ability to parent is worth taking seriously. Perinatal anxiety is common and very treatable, and addressing it during pregnancy can support both your wellbeing and your birth experience. You do not need to wait until postpartum to seek support.
The first session is primarily a conversation. Your therapist will ask about what brings you in, what you have been experiencing, and what you are hoping to get from therapy. There is no pressure to share more than you are comfortable with. By the end of the session, you should have a sense of whether the fit feels right, an initial understanding of what the work might look like, and a clear next step. You do not need to prepare anything in advance. Just come as you are.
Ready to start?
If anxiety is affecting your experience of pregnancy, postpartum, or new parenthood, you don't have to navigate it alone. Reach out to discuss whether therapy might be the right next step.
Book a Free 15-Min Consultation
Birth Feelings
Birth Feelings is a perinatal mental health practice led by Dr. Rebecca Branda, PsyD, based in Santa Monica, California. Specializing in birth trauma, postpartum anxiety, and the full emotional landscape of pregnancy and new parenthood, Birth Feelings offers individual therapy, EMDR, and VBAC coaching for mothers and birthing individuals navigating one of life's most transformative chapters.
Dr. Branda brings both clinical expertise and lived experience to this work. As an emergency c-section mom who later achieved a successful VBAC, she understands the emotional terrain of birth firsthand. Her practice is grounded in the belief that every parent deserves to feel heard, supported, and capable.
This page addresses mental health topics including anxiety and anxiety treatment approaches. It is intended for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical or psychological advice. If you are experiencing a mental health crisis, please contact a licensed mental health professional or call or text 988 (Suicide and Crisis Lifeline) immediately. Birth Feelings provides therapy services focused on perinatal mental health, birth trauma, and the emotional landscape of new parenthood.