How Individual Therapy Helps You Heal from Anxiety and Trauma

Written By Brian Shiers

Anxiety and trauma can quietly shape the way you think, feel, and move through the world. Even when you have learned to function outwardly, your internal experience may still feel chaotic, overwhelming, or disconnected. You may find yourself constantly tense, feeling unsafe for reasons you cannot fully explain, or unable to stop cycles of worry.

For many people, these patterns do not go away on their own. This is not because you are doing something wrong, but because anxiety and trauma literally reshape the brain and nervous system. Healing requires compassionate, intentional work in a safe and supportive space.

This is where individual therapy becomes an essential part of your healing process. At Aligned Mind Therapy, we help you slow down, understand your experience, and begin to restore a sense of safety, clarity, and connection within yourself.

Understanding Anxiety and Trauma

Although anxiety and trauma are often grouped together, they affect the mind and body in different ways and often overlap.

Anxiety: An overestimation of a threat and an underestimation of your ability to cope with it

Anxiety can include:

  • Racing thoughts

  • Anticipating worst possible outcomes

  • Tension in the body

  • Trouble sleeping

  • Feeling overstimulated or irritable

  • Difficulty concentrating

  • Chronically avoiding situations, choices, or conversations that are difficult

Your brain becomes wired to look for danger. This constant internal alarm system can leave you feeling drained and overwhelmed, while your life keeps getting smaller and more limited.

Trauma: A disruption to your body, mind, and emotions that reduces your functioning in some important way

Trauma can come from:

  • Childhood experiences

  • Emotional or physical abuse

  • Neglect

  • Accidents

  • Medical procedures

  • High conflict relationships

  • Sudden loss

  • Long-term instability

Trauma reorganizes your nervous system. You may feel stuck in:

  • Fight

  • Flight

  • Freeze

  • Fawn (being submissive, overly accommodating, or shut down)

Your mind may know that you are safe, while your body may not feel that way yet. Trauma can also masquerade as common interpretations of others’ behaviors as being threatening; this is difficult to spot in the moment because your interpretation of the person and situation can feel so true to you. Therapy helps reconnect your mind and body to increase your resilience and the ability to maintain a sense of self-reliance, as well as maintain healthy relationships. 

How Individual Therapy Supports Healing

Below are the core ways individual therapy helps you move out of anxiety and trauma and into a more grounded, calm, and connected version of yourself.

1. A Stable and Consistent Space to Be Understood

Anxiety and trauma can make your internal world feel confusing or contradictory. You might wonder:

  • Why am I reacting so strongly?

  • Why do I feel this way around certain people?

  • Why do I repeat the same patterns?

  • Why can I not relax?

Therapy gives you a place to slow down and explore these experiences at a pace that feels safe. At Aligned Mind Therapy, we work collaboratively, helping you understand your emotions without judgment or pressure.

2. Understanding the Mind-Body Connection

Anxiety and trauma are not only emotional. They are physical. The nervous system reacts before conscious thought. This is why you might:

  • Feel anxious without knowing why

  • Shut down during conflict

  • Have physical symptoms that do not have a medical explanation

  • Avoid situations that feel overwhelming

Therapeutic approaches that include somatic awareness and mindfulness help you understand your body's signals and regulate stress more effectively.

Over time, you learn to:

  • Recognize triggers early

  • Calm your body before distress escalates

  • Shift out of survival mode

  • Understand what your nervous system needs to feel safe

This work helps rebuild long-term resilience.

3. Processing Past Experiences

Trauma shapes the stories you tell yourself. These stories may sound like:

  • I am too much

  • I am not enough

  • It was my fault

  • I cannot trust anyone

  • I must stay in control

Individual therapy helps you understand where these beliefs came from and how they developed. Once you understand the origin, you can begin to let go of what no longer serves you.

Helpful modalities include:

Interpersonal Neurobiology (INB) 

Helps you understand how relationships play a vital role in the ways in which your anxiety or trauma was formed so that a direct path of healing is revealed. 

Emotion Focused Therapy (EFT)
 Helps you understand and heal the emotional patterns that were formed as part of your traumatic experiences so you can form healthier responses in romantic relationships. 

Trauma Informed CBT
 Helps identify and shift thought patterns that reinforce anxiety and fear, while crafting and practicing new behaviors that empower you. 

With support, your brain can integrate past experiences so they become memories, not active threats.

4. Practical Skills for Daily Life

Insight is important, but insight alone does not always change day to day stress. Therapy gives you practical tools such as:

  • Grounding exercises

  • Breathing techniques

  • Emotional regulation tools

  • Communication skills

  • Boundary setting

  • Cognitive restructuring

  • New, more authentic, and confident ways of showing up in the world

These tools help you intervene early before anxiety spirals or before trauma responses take over.

5. Improving Relationships and Connection

Anxiety and trauma often show up most intensely in relationships. You may notice:

  • Difficulty trusting others

  • Shutting down during conflict

  • Feeling overwhelmed by closeness

  • People pleasing

  • Fear of abandonment

  • Avoidance

Therapy helps you understand why these patterns formed and how to create healthier ways of relating.

Many clients find value in adding or transitioning into Couples Therapy if relationship concerns are central to their healing.

6. Reconnecting with Meaning and Self-Trust

As symptoms decrease and clarity increases, many people begin to reconnect with parts of themselves that were hidden or pushed aside. This can include:

  • Creativity

  • Confidence

  • Intuition

  • Emotional space

  • A sense of direction

  • Purpose

Therapy is not about becoming a new person. It is about returning to yourself in a more grounded and empowered way.

Healing Is Not Linear

Healing from anxiety and trauma takes time. Some weeks feel lighter. Others feel heavy. This does not mean you are moving backward. It means your mind and body are processing experiences at a deeper level.

Consistency is what creates long-term change.

Starting Individual Therapy at Aligned Mind Therapy

We offer Individual Therapy for adults and teens ages 14 to 17. Sessions are available online throughout California and in person at our Studio City office.

Therapy can feel intimidating when you are used to holding everything together on your own. Our goal is to help you feel supported, understood, and grounded as you move forward.

Brian Shiers