Therapy for Adults in Austin, Texas
Evidence-Based Individual Therapy for Anxiety, OCD, and Related Disorders
You've been managing this for a long time.
Maybe you've tried to reason your way out of it. You've told yourself it's not rational, that other people don't think this way, that you should be able to just let it go. And yet here you are - still caught in the same loops, still bracing for the same fears, still working hard to keep it together while something underneath keeps pulling at you.
Anxiety can look different for every person. For some, it's the relentless checking: locks, emails, health symptoms, relationships. For others, it's the avoidance that has quietly narrowed your life: the events you've stopped attending, the opportunities you've let pass, the conversations you've rehearsed so many times that you've stopped having them altogether. It might be the intrusive thoughts you've never told anyone about, the perfectionism that feels like it's protecting you but is slowly exhausting you, or the sense that no matter how well things are going, something bad is just around the corner.
Whatever anxiety looks like for you, it is treatable. And you don't have to keep managing it alone.
Our therapists provide compassionate, evidence-based individual therapy for adults in Round Rock and Austin, Texas
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Our therapists provide compassionate, evidence-based individual therapy for adults in Round Rock and Austin, Texas •
Panic Disorder, including unexpected panic attacks, fear of physical sensations, and avoidance that has begun to restrict daily life
Specific Phobias, including fear of driving, flying, illness, needles, and other phobias that limit independence or quality of life
Emetophobia, including fear of vomiting, nausea-related avoidance, and the food and lifestyle restrictions that often accompany it
PTSD and trauma-related anxiety, including intrusive memories, hypervigilance, and avoidance patterns following difficult or traumatic experiences
Health Anxiety, including persistent fear of illness, compulsive body-checking, and reassurance-seeking that never fully resolves the worry
Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors (BFRBs), including trichotillomania (hair pulling) and excoriation disorder (skin picking)
Depression, particularly when it co-occurs with anxiety or OCD
Perinatal and postpartum anxiety and OCD, including intrusive thoughts during pregnancy or after childbirth
Individual Therapy for Adults at Austin Anxiety and OCD Specialists
At Austin Anxiety and OCD Specialists, we provide evidence-based individual therapy for adults across Austin and Central Texas. Our therapists specialize in anxiety disorders, OCD, and related conditions, and bring advanced training in the approaches that research consistently shows to be most effective.
Therapy at our practice is not one-size-fits-all. It is structured, goal-oriented, and built around what matters most to you - your values, your daily life, and the specific ways anxiety or OCD is getting in the way.
We work with adults navigating:
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), including harm OCD, contamination OCD, relationship OCD, scrupulosity, health anxiety, and other subtypes
Generalized Anxiety Disorder, including persistent worry, difficulty tolerating uncertainty, and the exhaustion that comes with a mind that rarely turns off
Social Anxiety Disorder, including fear of judgment, avoidance of performance or social situations, and the self-consciousness that makes even ordinary interactions feel high-stakes
How We Approach Therapy for Adult Clients
Our therapists use an integrated, evidence-based approach that draws on:
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
CBT is one of the most thoroughly researched treatments available for anxiety and related disorders. It helps adults identify the thought patterns and behavioral cycles that maintain anxiety, and build practical skills for responding differently. CBT is active and collaborative; not just talking about problems, but working systematically to change the patterns driving them.
Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP)
ERP is the gold-standard treatment for OCD and is also highly effective for phobias, panic disorder, health anxiety, and emetophobia. Rather than trying to suppress or reason away intrusive thoughts, ERP helps adults gradually face feared situations, thoughts, and sensations while resisting compulsive or avoidant responses. Over time, the brain learns that feared outcomes are survivable and that anxiety can be tolerated without rituals or avoidance.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
ACT helps adults build a different relationship with anxiety - not fighting it or waiting for it to disappear before living fully, but learning to make room for uncomfortable thoughts and feelings while taking action guided by personal values. ACT is especially useful for adults who have gained insight into their anxiety but still feel stuck, and for building long-term resilience rather than just symptom relief.
What to Expect in Your First Therapy Session at Austin Anxiety and OCD Specialists
Seeking therapy can feel anxiety-provoking in itself especially if you've been managing things privately for a long time, or if previous attempts at therapy didn't address what was actually going on.
At Austin Anxiety and OCD Specialists, your first session is designed to be a genuine conversation, not a checklist. Your therapist will take time to understand your experience - not just your symptoms, but how anxiety or OCD is affecting your work, your relationships, your daily routines, and your sense of who you are.
The first session typically includes:
Building rapport in a supportive, nonjudgmental environment where you can speak honestly
Structured assessment using validated rating scales to clarify your symptoms, understand patterns, and establish a baseline for tracking progress
Psychoeducation about how anxiety or OCD works and why the strategies you've been using to manage it may be keeping it going
Collaborative goal-setting grounded in what matters most to you - not a generic treatment template, but a plan built around your life
Therapy at our practice is never about forcing uncomfortable experiences or moving faster than feels manageable. It is about building the skills, the confidence, and the insight to respond to anxiety differently - so it stops making decisions for you.
Common Therapy Goals for Adults
At Austin Anxiety and OCD Specialists treatment is highly individualized, but adults who work with our therapists often focus on goals such as:
Reducing compulsions and rituals that are consuming time, energy, or creating shame
Returning to avoided activities such as work situations, social events, relationships, travel, or daily tasks that anxiety has gradually made off-limits
Tolerating uncertainty without needing to check, seek reassurance, or mentally review until the discomfort fades
Improving relationships affected by anxiety, OCD, or avoidance - including relationships with partners, family members, or colleagues
Building confidence at work - speaking up in meetings, managing professional performance anxiety, or addressing perfectionism that is interfering with productivity or satisfaction
Reducing physical anxiety symptoms - learning to interpret racing heart, muscle tension, or nausea as manageable rather than threatening
Living more fully - not waiting until anxiety is gone to start engaging with the life you want
Why Specialization Matters
Many therapists treat anxiety as part of a broad general practice. At Austin Anxiety and OCD Specialists, anxiety and OCD are all we do.
This specialization matters for several reasons. OCD in particular requires treatment approaches that are meaningfully different from general anxiety therapy. Interventions that help with other conditions - extended reassurance, extensive exploration of why thoughts occur, strategies focused primarily on reducing distress - can unintentionally strengthen OCD over time. Effective OCD treatment requires a therapist who understands the disorder, knows how to design exposures that target the specific obsessive-compulsive cycle, and can distinguish between anxiety-driven behavior and appropriate caution.
More broadly, anxiety disorders are complex and often overlapping. Social anxiety can look like introversion. OCD can look like conscientiousness or perfectionism. Health anxiety can look like responsible self-advocacy. Panic disorder can mimic cardiac symptoms. An accurate understanding of what is driving your experience - not a best guess - is the foundation of effective treatment.
Our therapists receive ongoing training, participate in regular clinical consultation, and stay current with the latest research in anxiety and OCD treatment. When you work with us, you benefit from a team that holds each other to a high standard of clinical excellence.
Individual Therapy or IOP: Which is Right for You?
For many adults, weekly individual therapy is the right level of care - sufficient structure, personalized attention, and enough time between sessions to practice skills in daily life.
For adults whose anxiety or OCD is causing significant interference - affecting work, relationships, or daily functioning in ways that weekly therapy hasn't been able to address - our Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP) offers a more concentrated approach. Our IOP provides multiple hours of therapy per week over a focused period, allowing for faster skill development, more frequent exposure practice, and the momentum needed to interrupt entrenched patterns.
If you're not sure which level of care is right for you, we can help you figure that out during your initial consultation.
A Final Word for Adults Considering Therapy in Austin, Texas
Anxiety does not have to keep making decisions for you. The avoidance, the checking, the exhaustion of managing things alone - these are patterns that can change with the right kind of support.
Effective treatment does not require you to become a different person, eliminate all anxiety, or achieve some idealized standard of calm. It means developing the skills to respond differently when anxiety shows up and gradually reclaiming the parts of your life that anxiety has been quietly managing on your behalf.
If you recognize yourself in what you've read here, reaching out is the next step. Our team specializes in helping adults living with anxiety and OCD build the skills, the confidence, and the freedom to live more fully.
To schedule a consultation with an anxiety or OCD specialist at Austin Anxiety and OCD Specialists, call 512-246-7225or email hello@austinanxiety.com.
Therapists for Adults at Austin Anxiety and OCD Specialists
Allandale Office
Allandale Office
Westlake Office
Round Rock Office
Westlake Office
Round Rock Office
Allandale Office
Westlake Office
Telehealth
Westlake Office
Round Rock and Allandale Offices
Round Rock and Allandale Offices
Telehealth
Allandale Office
Round Rock Office
Round Rock Office
Westlake Office
Allandale Office
Round Rock Office
Our diagnostic specialties include:
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Generalized anxiety disorder is characterized by chronic, persistent anxiety and worry that is not associated with any one event or situation. Common worries include fear of: losing control, not being able to cope, failure, rejection or abandonment, illness and death. In children and adolescents, the focus of worry is often on school and athletic performance. We all experience anxiety from time to time; however, for those with generalized anxiety disorder, the worry is excessive and out of proportion to the reality of the situation. With generalized anxiety disorder, there is a tendency to overestimate the likelihood of something bad happening and underestimate the ability to cope if that situation does, in fact, occur. Generalized anxiety disorder is common and can develop at any age.
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Panic disorder is characterized by recurrent unexpected panic attacks, or episodes of acute, overwhelming fear or discomfort, as well as resulting worry and/or changes in behavior due to these panic attacks. While panic attacks peak, or are at their worst, within minutes (typically within 10 minutes), the episodes can have a lasting impact on a person’s thoughts and behaviors. As seen in panic disorder, panic attacks can lead to increased worry about having additional attacks or fear of the consequences of these episodes (e.g., fear that the symptoms are indicators of dying or “going crazy”). Many individuals with panic disorder even begin to develop a baseline level of worry about their health, with a hyperawareness of mild changes in bodily functions (e.g., noticing slight changes in heartbeat and fearing acute cardiovascular illness). This hyperawareness, as well as panic attacks, in general, often leads to frequent medical visits if not properly identified and treated.
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Specific phobias, which are defined as an intense, irrational fear and avoidance of a specific object or situation, are the most common type of anxiety disorder. Specific phobias typically develop in childhood or adolescence and are twice as common in females than males. Common phobias include: insects, animals, thunder, medical procedures, flying, heights, and elevators. While it may temporarily reduce anxiety, avoidance maintains anxiety over time.
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Social Anxiety Disorder is characterized by fear of embarrassment associated with performance or exposure to evaluation by others. While we all feel a degree of nervousness in certain social situations, for those with social anxiety disorder, the anxiety is often so severe that it leads to avoidance of these situations altogether. A common concern among people with social anxiety disorder is that they will say or do something that will cause others to view them as weak, anxious, or crazy. This concern is typically out of proportion to the situation. Our Austin Anxiety Therapists can help.
Children and adolescents with social anxiety may avoid recess or gym, using the school restroom, or eating in the cafeteria. They may have difficulty raising a hand in class, giving a presentation, or asking a question that would bring unwanted attention.
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Among pediatric populations, compulsions are usually more easily identifiable than obsessions because young children may not be able to articulate the reasons for their repetitive behaviors or mental acts. Furthermore, unlike obsessions, compulsions are often observable by others. However, just because a child cannot articulate the obsessions, does not mean obsessions are not present. In fact, research suggests that most children experience both obsessions and compulsions.
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Trichotillomania (trick-o-till-o-may-nee-uh) refers to the repetitive pulling out of one’s own hair. Affecting approximately one to two in 50 people in their lifetime, trichotillomania generally begins during late childhood or early adolescence (around age 11 or 12). In adulthood, trichotillomania affects significantly more women than men. Hair is pulled from eyelashes, eyebrows, beard, arm hair, hair on the scalp, etc). Without proper treatment, trichotillomania generally becomes a chronic condition.
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Affecting approximately 2-5% of people in the United States, excoriation disorder refers to the excessive picking of one’s own skin (e.g., cuticles, acne, moles, scabs, etc.). Skin picking usually occurs in an effort to improve perceived imperfections; however, it often leads to scarring, discoloration and/or damage to the tissue. Onset of symptoms generally begins during adolescence (around age 14 or 15); however, it can begin much earlier. Skin picking tends to affect more women than men. Without proper treatment, excoriation disorder tends to develop into a chronic condition.
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It is common to experience distressing memories, difficulty sleeping, and restlessness following a tragedy; however, for most people these reactions tend to improve with time. If improvement does not occur or if the reactions worsen, it may be an indicator of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). PTSD is characterized by four symptom clusters: Persistent mood disturbances, hypervigilance, re-experiencing, and avoidance. Not everyone who experiences a traumatic event will develop PTSD. About 60% of women and 50% of men experience at least one traumatic event in their lifetime, and most will never develop PTSD. PTSD affects approximately 1 in 15 children, 1 in 9 adult women, and 1 in 18 adult men in the United States.
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Affecting approximately 1 in 160 children in the United States, Tourette Syndrome is known as a tic disorder. Tics are characterised by involuntary, repetitive movements (such as shrugging, jerking, or blinking) and/or vocalizations (such as humming, coughing, sniffing, or clearing the throat).
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Affecting approximately 1 in 33 children, 1 in 8 adolescents, and 1 in 15 adults, Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is one of the most common behavioral health disorders in the United States. MDD is a mood disorder characterized by a persistent and pervasive low mood accompanied by several symptoms that impact daily functioning.
Don't settle for a life limited by anxiety.
Schedule an appointment with our dedicated anxiety specialists, and experience the freedom of creating your own path.