When Anxiety or Depression Won’t Let Up: How Therapy Actually Helps (And What to Look For in a Therapist)

You know the feeling. You wake up and it’s already there — a low-grade dread, a weight that doesn’t have a specific name. Or maybe it’s the opposite: a restlessness you can’t sit still with, thoughts looping back to the same worries before you even get out of bed. You go through your day. You function. From the outside, you probably look fine. But inside, it feels like something is always slightly wrong, and you’re starting to wonder if this is just what life is supposed to feel like.

It’s not.

Anxiety and depression are two of the most common things people struggle with — and also two of the most undertreated, because they’re so good at convincing you that you should be able to handle this on your own. That it’s not bad enough. That other people have real problems. That you’re just being dramatic, or weak, or soft.

None of that is true. And if you’ve been carrying this for a while, you deserve actual help — not just gritting your teeth harder.

Reaching Out Isn’t Giving Up — It’s the Opposite

I’ve worked with a lot of people who came to therapy later than they wish they had. Not because they didn’t know they were struggling, but because asking for help felt like an admission of failure. Like they should have figured this out by now.

Seeking support isn’t weakness. It’s the thing that actually moves you forward when you’ve been stuck in the same loop for too long. The fact that you’re reading this means something in you is ready to try something different. That matters.

What Therapy for Anxiety and Depression Actually Does

Therapy is more than talking about your feelings. That’s part of it — but if that were all it was, you could just call a friend. What good therapy does is give you a structured way to understand the patterns that are keeping you stuck, and then actually change them.

For anxiety and depression, I lean heavily on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) approaches because the evidence behind them is strong. Here’s what that actually looks like in practice:

Identifying thought patterns. Anxiety and depression are both maintained by the stories we tell ourselves — usually automatic, fast, and negative. “I’ll fail.” “Nobody actually likes me.” “Things are never going to get better.” These thoughts feel like facts because they happen so quickly and so often. CBT helps you slow them down, examine them, and learn to respond to them differently instead of just believing them by default.

Behavioral activation. Depression especially has a way of pulling you out of your life. You stop doing things you used to enjoy. You isolate. And the less you do, the worse you feel — which makes you want to do even less. Behavioral activation breaks that cycle deliberately, helping you re-engage with your life in small, concrete steps that rebuild momentum over time.

For anxiety rooted in the past, EMDR can be a game-changer. Sometimes anxiety isn’t just a thinking problem — it’s a nervous system problem. If your anxiety has its roots in something that happened to you (even something that doesn’t feel like capital-T Trauma), the body can stay stuck in alert mode long after the situation has passed. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a specific, evidence-based approach that helps your brain fully process those experiences so they’re no longer running the show. It’s not talk therapy in the traditional sense — and for some people, it reaches things that talking alone never quite gets to.

How to Know When It’s Time

Here’s the version I wish more people heard: you don’t have to be in crisis to start therapy. You don’t have to be unable to get out of bed, or having panic attacks every day, or falling apart at work. You’re allowed to come in when things are hard but still manageable — that’s actually the best time, because there’s still room to work.

Some questions worth sitting with: Has this been going on for more than a few weeks? Is it affecting your relationships, your work, your sleep, your sense of who you are? Have you tried to push through it on your own and found yourself in the same place?

If any of those land, that’s enough. You don’t have to justify needing help by hitting some invisible bottom first.

What to Look For in a Therapist

Not all therapy is the same, and not all therapists are the same. A few things worth paying attention to when you’re looking:

Specialization matters. A therapist who works with anxiety and depression specifically — who uses evidence-based approaches and can articulate why — is going to be more effective than a generalist who “also does anxiety.” Ask what methods they use and why. If they can’t answer that clearly, keep looking.

Cash pay vs. insurance. I know private pay feels like a luxury. But there’s a real reason many therapists who provide the best care work outside of insurance: insurance requires a diagnosis in your permanent medical record to reimburse, limits the number of sessions they’ll cover, and constrains what kind of treatment you can receive. Private pay means your care is between you and your therapist — not dictated by what a billing code allows. You get more flexibility, more continuity, and a therapist who can actually focus on what you need.

Telehealth is worth taking seriously. I work exclusively via telehealth, and I’ve watched it remove real barriers for people. No commute. No parking. No rearranging your schedule around an office visit. You show up from wherever you are — your home, your car, a quiet room at lunch. For a lot of people, being in their own space makes it easier to be honest. The comfort is real, and it translates into the work.

What I Offer

I’m Austin Young, LCSW, and I work with adults navigating anxiety, depression, and the kind of low-level suffering that’s hard to name but very real.

My approach pulls from several evidence-based methods:

• CBT-based approaches — to identify and shift the thought patterns and behaviors that keep anxiety and depression going
• EMDR — for anxiety and depression with roots in past experiences or trauma, when the nervous system needs more than just talk
• Individual therapy — focused, private, and built around you specifically
• Telehealth sessions — fully remote, so geography isn’t a barrier

I’m licensed in California, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Nevada, Idaho, and Wyoming. All sessions are private pay, which means no insurance limitations and no diagnosis required to get started.

I also work with eating disorders (CBT-E certified), couples (Gottman Method + EFT), and trauma. But if anxiety or depression is what brought you here, that’s where we’ll start.