When Worry Won’t Stop: Understanding Anxiety and Finding Relief in Calabasas and Hidden Hills
If you find yourself lying awake at 2 a.m. replaying conversations, dreading tomorrow before it even arrives, or feeling a persistent tension in your chest that you can’t quite explain — you are not alone, and something can be done. Anxiety is one of the most common experiences people carry into my office, and it is also one of the most treatable. As a therapist serving individuals and families in Calabasas, Hidden Hills, and the surrounding Los Angeles communities, I’ve spent over 40 years helping people move from a state of chronic worry to a life that feels more grounded, more spacious, and more like their own.
What Anxiety Actually Is — and Isn’t
Anxiety is not a character flaw. It is not a sign that you are weak, dramatic, or broken. At its core, anxiety is a nervous system response — your body’s attempt to protect you from perceived danger. The problem is that in modern life, that alarm system often fires when no real danger is present: before a difficult conversation, during a quiet moment when the mind suddenly floods with “what ifs,” or in social situations where you feel inexplicably exposed.
Understanding that anxiety has a purpose — even when it has become dysregulated — is often the first step toward changing your relationship with it. You don’t need to fight your anxiety. You need to understand it.
How Anxiety Shows Up in Daily Life
People often don’t recognize anxiety for what it is because it wears so many different faces. Some of the most common patterns I see in my work with clients across the West Valley include:
- Persistent overthinking — cycling through the same fears or worst-case scenarios without resolution
- Physical tension — tight shoulders, headaches, stomach discomfort, or a racing heart that medical tests can’t explain
- Avoidance — steering clear of situations, conversations, or decisions because the anticipatory dread feels unbearable
- Difficulty being present — mind always leaping ahead to potential problems, unable to settle into the current moment
- Irritability or emotional reactivity — snapping at people you love because your system is already running at capacity
If any of these feel familiar, please know this: these are symptoms of a nervous system under strain, not permanent traits of who you are.
What Anxiety Therapy Looks Like
When we work together on anxiety, we don’t simply teach you to breathe through it or think positive thoughts. That kind of surface-level approach rarely produces lasting change. Instead, we look beneath the anxiety to understand what it is protecting — the old wounds, the learned beliefs, the relational patterns that taught your system it needed to stay on high alert.
My approach is trauma-informed and attachment-based, which means I pay attention to the whole person — your history, your relationships, your body, and the meaning you’ve made of your experiences. We work at a pace that feels sustainable and safe. Healing doesn’t have to be retraumatizing.
Practical Tools That Actually Help
Alongside the deeper exploratory work, I also offer practical strategies for managing anxiety in daily life — techniques grounded in neuroscience and decades of clinical experience:
- Nervous system regulation through breath and body awareness
- Identifying and interrupting anxious thought loops
- Building tolerance for uncertainty — the core skill that quiets chronic worry
- Strengthening the internal sense of safety that anxiety has eroded
You Don’t Have to Live This Way
I often tell clients: anxiety convinced you that vigilance is keeping you safe. Therapy helps you discover that real safety comes from within — from knowing yourself, trusting yourself, and having someone in your corner who understands the terrain.
Susie Cole Rome, MA, LMFT, is a licensed marriage and family therapist with over 40 years of experience providing therapy for individuals, couples, and families in Hidden Hills, Calabasas, and across the Greater Los Angeles area — in person and via secure telehealth for California residents.
Ready to Begin?
Susie Cole Rome, MA, LMFT, offers compassionate therapy for individuals, couples, and families in Hidden Hills, Calabasas, Woodland Hills, Malibu, Agoura Hills, and throughout the Greater Los Angeles area — with secure telehealth available for all California residents.
📞 (818) 618-4762
✉️ Susie@susierome.com
📍 24933 Kit Carson Rd, Hidden Hills, CA 91302
👉 Schedule a Free 15-Minute Consultation