SERVICES
Individual Therapy
Our clinicians provide compassionate, evidence-based, and individualized services for adults, adolescents, and children. Individual therapy is available in person and through telehealth from all of our clinicians.
Individual therapy is a personalized treatment process aimed at helping individuals navigate and overcome various mental health challenges and improve their overall well-being. At Anxiety Treatment Center of Austin (ATCA), our team uses several evidence based approaches, including Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), Prolonged Exposure (PE), Virtual Reality Therapy, and others.
When you receive individual therapy at ATCA, our clinicians will tailor interventions based on your unique needs and goals. By integrating elements of CBT, ACT, ERP and others as appropriate, our team collaboratively works with individuals to develop coping skills, enhance self-awareness, and promote lasting positive change. Through a supportive therapeutic relationship and evidence-based interventions, individual therapy offers a pathway to greater emotional resilience, improved interpersonal relationships, and enhanced overall quality of life.
Couples Therapy
Couples therapy, also known as marriage, relationship, or couples counseling, is a form of psychotherapy that aims to help couples resolve conflicts and improve their relationship dynamics. The Austin couples therapy offered by ATCA provides a safe and supportive environment for couples to explore their concerns, communicate effectively, and gain insights into their relationship patterns.
In couples therapy, a trained therapist or counselor facilitates constructive conversations between partners, helping them identify and address underlying issues such as trust, communication problems, intimacy concerns, or unresolved conflicts. The therapy sessions may involve various techniques and interventions, such as active listening, conflict resolution strategies, problem-solving exercises, and homework assignments, tailored to the specific needs and goals of the couple.
Group Therapy
The Anxiety Treatment Center of Austin offers treatment groups for a number of topics. Groups are an excellent way to receive help and support for anxiety and other concerns. Our groups meet weekly, and are open to those who meet the groups’ criteria (though preference will be given to patients who are also seeing an Anxiety Treatment Center of Austin clinician for individual therapy). Our group clinicians have extensive experience leading groups in a variety of settings including outpatient clinics, college counseling centers, hospitals, and the VA.
Prospective patients who are interested in joining a group at the Anxiety Treatment Center of Austin should contact us to schedule a consultation. During the consultation, one of our group clinicians will meet with you to discuss the group and treatment goals, and answer any questions you might have. Groups vary from ongoing to time limited. We may request that a new group member commit to attending for a certain number of weeks. New group members will be added on a space-available basis.
The fee for our groups is $60-65 per week.
One of the great advantages of a group is the ability to receive support and encouragement from others who are experiencing similar difficulties. Our groups provide plenty of opportunity for this to occur, but are not focused only on giving and receiving support. Our group leaders carefully select material focused on learning coping skills, building confidence, and living with anxiety. The goal of the group is to create a safe, positive, and active interpersonal environment in which all group members feel comfortable discussing their anxiety and trying new things.
"Anxious in Austin" Group
Group Facilitator: Diana Damer, Ph.D.
Our “Anxious in Austin” support group is open to adults who struggle with any type of anxiety, whether it be worry, panic, social anxiety, OCD, health anxiety or other challenges. While each person’s experience with anxiety varies, the group focuses on the concepts and skills that can be applied to all anxiety issues.
Each week, we cover a new concept or skill designed to help group members interrupt the vicious cycle of anxiety. Example topics are:
Identifying and changing unhelpful ways of thinking
Facing avoided and feared situations
Communicating effectively
Coping with perfectionism
Practicing mindful acceptance of discomfort
The “Anxious in Austin” group offers the unique opportunity of learning new ways of coping with your anxiety while connecting with and receiving support from others like you. If anxiety has made you feel alone and misunderstood, this group may be what you are looking for.
The fee for our groups is $60 per week.
Time: Mondays from 5:30 to 7:00 pm
Now meeting virtually!
Group Status: Evening (Open to New Members)
SPACE
SPACE stands for Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions and is a parent-based treatment program for children and adolescents with anxiety, OCD, and related problems.
SPACE was developed by Dr. Eli Lebowitz at the Yale Child Study Center and has been tested and found to be efficacious in randomized controlled clinical trials.
SPACE aims to treat children and adolescents with anxiety disorders and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Although children do not have to attend SPACE sessions – they are the patients! When SPACE treatment is successful children feel less anxious and function better following treatment.
Some of the main anxiety problems treated with SPACE include:
Separation anxiety
Social anxiety
Generalized anxiety
Fears and phobias
Panic disorder and Agoraphobia
Selective mutism
Obsessive-compulsive disorder
Parents (and other caregivers) participate in SPACE treatment sessions. In most cases the child or adolescent does not need to attend the treatment sessions.
Parents who participate in SPACE will learn skills and tools to help their child overcome anxiety, OCD or related problems.
The treatment focuses on changes that parents can make to their own behavior, they do not need to make their child change.
The two main changes that parents learn to make in SPACE treatment are to respond more supportively to their anxious child and to reduce the accommodations they have been making to the child symptoms.
To read more about SPACE and how it works visit the Resources page of the SPACE website.
Online Therapy
Our online therapy sessions are just like the in-person anxiety therapy we offer, but without the “in person” part. Patients receive the same amount of time, attention, and care with one of our licensed therapists. ATCA online therapy connects you with proven, compassionate modalities that are built on years of research and practice. As you can see from our testimonials, our therapy sessions have helped many people, often even after just a few appointments.
During a one-on-one online therapy session, your conversation with the therapist will involve listening, feedback, and the use of proven therapeutic methods including cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to assist you in moving beyond your feelings of anxiety and fear that may be keeping you from happiness, peace and satisfaction.
At the Anxiety Treatment Center of Austin, our licensed psychologists bring decades of clinical experience in academic and professional settings to the table to help you solve your anxiety issues. We also strongly believe that understanding and empathy are essential to finding the most effective approach for a particular diagnosis.
Virtual Reality Therapy
Virtual Reality (VR) therapy opens up exciting new treatment avenues for a variety of psychological and anxiety disorders. Using VR headgear, therapists can walk patients through a variety of modalities and experiences to address fears and behaviors in a way that would be impractical or impossible in real life. The Anxiety Treatment Center of Austin is excited to announce that we now offer Austin VR therapy with the aim of improving exposure therapies for anxiety disorders.
ATCA provides various forms of therapy to treat OCD, panic attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) and phobias. Now, by incorporating Psious VR therapy, we are able to apply exposure therapy virtually to immerse our patients in realistic, in-depth scenarios to better prepare them to confront and overcome their fears.
Virtual reality is validated by over 20 years of psychological research and has been proven to complement traditional therapy in a number of ways. Historically, due to prohibitive cost and the lack of development for psychological applications, this technology was only available at medical centers and university research laboratories. Fortunately, Psious’ multidisciplinary team of psychologists, 3D artists, and engineers created this flexible platform for mental health practitioners, which makes Austin VR therapy feasible for patients at ATCA.
VR therapy is an appropriate, clinically-supported use for virtual reality gear.
“Even in the early days of virtual reality, researchers quickly recognized that the technology was a great fit for providing exposure therapy, in which patients are exposed to things they fear in a safe place,” the American Psychological Association writes (Weir, 2018).
The VR therapy at our center offers a number of different exposures to commonly experienced anxiety stressors, such as:
Acrophobia
Claustrophobia
Eating disorders
Fear of darkness
Fear of dogs
Fear of flying
Fear of driving
Fear of public speaking