Evidence-BasedTreatment
Anxiety Care · Children, Teens & Young Adults
Anxiety care for
growing minds
Anxiety can make everyday life feel overwhelming. Compassionate, evidence-based therapy offers children, adolescents, and young adults a steady path toward more calm, confidence, and connection.
In-Person & TelehealthPSYPACT States
Children, Teens &Young Adults
Family InvolvedEvery Step of the Way
When worry starts shaping the day
Anxiety shows up in many ways: school avoidance, panic, perfectionism, social fears, constant what-if thoughts, or trouble sleeping. Over time it wears down confidence, friendships, and everyday joy.
It is not always visible. Some children seem fine on the surface while feeling overwhelmed inside, and even loving families can find that worry creates distance and daily strain.
Therapy makes sense of what is driving the worry and builds practical tools for lasting change, so a young person can feel like themselves again.
What anxiety looks like at different ages
The same underlying worry rarely wears the same face twice.
Children
Anxiety speaks through the body and behavior before words. Stomachaches on school mornings that fade by Saturday, tearful goodbyes at drop off, trouble falling asleep alone, the same question asked and re-asked, meltdowns out of proportion, or going quiet in new places.
Adolescents
In teens, anxiety is easy to mistake for attitude. Short answers and a slammed door, homework restarted late into the night, a stomach too unsettled to eat before a test, plans cancelled last minute, or a strong student who quietly starts skipping class.
Young adults
It often shows up as avoidance dressed as logistics. Emails left unopened, appointments pushed, a course dropped the week of the first presentation. Perfectionism can hide it for a long time, because the work still gets done, at a rising private cost.
The forms anxiety often takes
Most young people arrive with more than one of these, described here as a way of recognizing a child rather than a checklist.
Panic and panic attacks
A sudden surge of fear that peaks within minutes: pounding heart, shortness of breath, shaking, nausea, or a sense of unreality, often with no trigger. The sensations are convincing enough that families fear something medical, and dread of the next attack narrows where a young person will go.
Separation anxiety
Distress at being apart from a parent that goes past ordinary clinginess: long, painful goodbyes, refusing sleepovers or camp, calls home from the school office, or fear that something will happen to a caregiver while apart.
Social anxiety
Fear of being watched, judged, or embarrassed: reluctance to raise a hand, order food, or join a group already talking. Some children read as shy; others look social but rehearse beforehand, then replay it after.
Specific fears and phobias
Intense fear pointed at one thing: dogs, needles, storms, vomiting, elevators, flying, the dark. It sits far out of proportion to the real risk, and avoiding it slowly reshapes a family's routines and travel.
Generalized worry
Worry that jumps from topic to topic and never runs out: grades, health, money, the news, whether a friend is upset. It travels with restlessness, tense shoulders, irritability, and a mind that will not switch off at bedtime.
Selective mutism
A child who talks freely at home but cannot speak in certain settings, most often school. It is not defiance or choice: the child is often willing yet physically cannot get the words out, and pressing for speech deepens the silence.
School avoidance
Mornings that turn into a standoff, repeat trips to the nurse's office, or days missed altogether. It is usually anxiety in a practical disguise, and the longer a young person stays away, the heavier the return feels.
Physical symptoms
Stomachaches, headaches, nausea, a racing heart, and broken sleep, often alongside a clean bill of health from the pediatrician. For many children these are the first and loudest signals, and the sensations are real.
A steady place to understand what anxiety is protecting
Anxiety often has a purpose: to keep a person safe, prepared, or in control. Dr. Wald slows down, looks at the patterns that keep it going, and gently begins to shift them.
Together, they build insight, strengthen coping skills, and make space for more ease, confidence, and connection.
What anxiety is guarding differs from person to person: one way in a child who cannot let a parent out of sight, another in a young adult who has quietly stopped applying for anything.
A steady, practical process
Map the pattern
Dr. Wald maps what fuels the anxiety: thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and situations, so the cycle becomes clear and change can begin.
Build practical tools
She uses evidence-based strategies to calm the body, challenge unhelpful thinking, face fears gradually, and build confidence through small wins.
Support the whole system
She involves parents and caregivers, coordinates with schools when helpful, and addresses family dynamics so change lasts beyond the therapy room.
What tends to help when anxiety escalates
Parents most often ask what to do in the moment, at bedtime or in the car outside school. These are general patterns, not instructions for a particular child.
What tends to help
Slow everything down: a lower voice, fewer words, more time than feels natural. Name what is happening without debating whether it is warranted. Stay close and steady, so a child can borrow your calm instead of you borrowing their alarm. Once the body settles, keep the conversation short and matter of fact.
What often makes it harder
Reasoning with a fear at full volume, since logic rarely lands mid-surge. Reassurance repeated on request, which soothes for a minute and teaches a child to come back for more. Raised voices, ultimatums, or a closing door. And, most understandable of all, taking the feared thing away: relief is immediate, but the fear tends to grow.
How Dr. Wald helps
Treatment draws on cognitive-behavioral therapy, graded exposure, behavioral parent training, and mindfulness skills, paced for the person in the room rather than a fixed program.
CBT-informed treatment
Dr. Wald uses proven cognitive-behavioral approaches tailored to each child, adolescent, and young adult.
Exposure work
Clients face feared situations step by step, at a pace agreed in advance, building tolerance, confidence, and freedom.
Emotion regulation
She strengthens tools for managing big feelings, reducing overwhelm, and staying grounded.
Parent guidance
She partners with parents to support growth, reduce accommodation, and strengthen connection.
Young adult transitions
She supports emerging adults navigating school, work, relationships, and independence.
Care that helps anxiety loosen its grip
Take the first step toward more calm, confidence, and connection.