Anxiety Treatment for Kids, Teens, Adults, and Families
In St. George, Utah
Anxiety can make life smaller. It can lead to avoidance, repeated reassurance, panic, perfectionism, school struggles, family conflict, and the feeling that ordinary situations are harder than they should be.
At Back In Charge Anxiety, we provide evidence-based anxiety treatment in St. George, Utah for children, teens, adults, and families throughout Southern Utah. Our clinicians help clients understand anxiety, identify the patterns that keep it going, and develop practical skills for moving toward school, work, relationships, independence, and meaningful activities again.
Treatment may include exposure-based cognitive behavioral therapy, anxiety education, skills training, parent coaching, and support for reducing avoidance and reassurance cycles. Anxiety assessment and psychological testing are also available when clients need greater clarity about their symptoms or treatment needs.
The goal is not to eliminate every anxious feeling. The goal is to help clients stop letting anxiety make the decisions.
When Anxiety Starts Controlling Daily Life
Anxiety is a normal human response, but it can become disruptive when fear and worry begin controlling choices.
A child may refuse school, avoid sleeping alone, or repeatedly ask a parent if something bad will happen. A teenager may avoid social activities, presentations, driving, or unfamiliar experiences because of embarrassment or fear of failure. An adult may overprepare, delay decisions, avoid medical appointments, or spend hours thinking through every possible outcome.
Anxiety may also appear through physical symptoms. Some people experience nausea, stomachaches, headaches, dizziness, muscle tension, difficulty breathing, a racing heartbeat, or a sense that something terrible is about to happen.
Avoidance usually provides immediate relief. Reassurance may also calm the person briefly. However, these responses can teach the brain that the situation was dangerous and could not be handled independently.
Over time, more situations may begin to feel unsafe. Effective anxiety treatment helps clients interrupt this cycle and build confidence through repeated experience.
Who Back In Charge Anxiety Helps
Back In Charge Anxiety works with clients experiencing excessive worry, panic attacks, phobias, social anxiety, separation anxiety, school anxiety, school refusal, perfectionism, avoidance, and physical symptoms of anxiety.
Treatment may also address repeated reassurance-seeking, fear of failure, health-related worry, difficulty tolerating uncertainty, and anxiety that disrupts family routines, education, employment, relationships, or daily responsibilities.
Anxiety does not look the same for everyone. Some clients experience an intense fear connected to one specific situation. Others feel worried across many areas of life. Some appear calm and successful externally while privately managing constant tension, overthinking, and fear of making mistakes.
An evaluation can help clarify the pattern and identify an appropriate direction for treatment.
Children may not have the words to explain that they feel anxious. Instead, anxiety may appear through crying, irritability, physical complaints, emotional outbursts, repeated questions, clinginess, or refusal to participate.
Back In Charge Anxiety provides child anxiety therapy for separation anxiety, specific phobias, selective mutism, school refusal, excessive worry, health fears, perfectionism, and other concerns.
Treatment is adapted to the child’s age and developmental needs. Children learn how anxiety works, how avoidance strengthens fear, and how to approach difficult situations through manageable steps.
Parent help is a critical component of treatment. Family responses can either support confidence or unintentionally reinforce anxiety and adjusting responses often requires support to manage emotion dysregulation. Caregivers may receive guidance for reducing repeated reassurance, supporting exposure practice, and helping their child develop greater independence.
Anxiety during adolescence may affect school performance, friendships, family relationships, sleep, driving, work, sports, dating, and plans for the future.
Teenagers may experience social anxiety, specific phobias, panic symptoms, excessive worry, perfectionism, school avoidance, fear of failure, or repeated concern about how others view them.
Some teens withdraw from activities. Others continue performing well but spend excessive time preparing, checking, reviewing conversations, or worrying about mistakes.
Teen anxiety therapy respects the adolescent’s increasing need for privacy and independence. Treatment connects anxiety strategies to practical goals that matter to the teen, such as attending school regularly, participating socially, completing assignments more efficiently, or feeling more confident in unfamiliar situations.
Parents of teenagers typically participate when their responses, expectations, or family routines are part of the anxiety cycle. Parents also help facilitate practice, reinforcement, and teen engagement.
Adult anxiety may affect work, education, relationships, parenting, healthcare, sleep, and major decisions.
Back In Charge Anxiety works with adults experiencing generalized worry, social anxiety, panic symptoms, specific phobias, health anxiety, perfectionism, fear of failure, and anxiety related to major life changes.
Adults may avoid public speaking, driving, flying, medical care, social situations, or unfamiliar responsibilities. Others may participate while feeling tense, overprepared, and mentally exhausted.
Trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder are clinically distinct from anxiety disorders, though they may involve fear, avoidance, physical arousal, and a heightened sense of danger. Assessment can help clarify the nature of these concerns and guide an appropriate treatment plan.
Adult anxiety therapy focuses on real-life situations and helps clients reduce avoidance, respond differently to worry, and make decisions without requiring complete certainty.
Our Approach to Anxiety Treatment
Back In Charge Anxiety uses evidence-based strategies to help clients gradually reduce avoidance and increase confidence.
Treatment begins by identifying the situations, thoughts, physical sensations, and family responses connected to anxiety. Clients learn how short-term coping strategies, such as avoidance or repeated reassurance, may keep fear active over time.
The treatment plan may include anxiety education, exposure-based strategies, skills for responding to panic symptoms, parent coaching, practical home plans, and support for school avoidance.
Clients also learn how to recognize the difference between useful problem-solving and repetitive worry. The objective is not to argue with every anxious thought. It is to develop a more flexible response and continue participating in life even when uncertainty is present.
Exposure-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Exposure-based cognitive behavioral therapy helps clients gradually approach the situations, thoughts, sensations, or activities they have been avoiding.
A child with separation anxiety may practice short, planned periods away from a caregiver. A teen with social anxiety may gradually participate in conversations, presentations, or group activities. An adult with a driving phobia may begin with easier routes before progressing toward more difficult situations.
Exposure is not about forcing a client into the most frightening situation immediately. It begins with manageable steps and progresses as confidence develops.
The goal is to help the brain learn that anxiety can be experienced without immediate escape, avoidance, or repeated reassurance.
Skills for Panic and Physical Anxiety Symptoms
Panic symptoms can feel dangerous even when they are part of the body’s anxiety response. A racing heart, dizziness, trembling, nausea, chest discomfort, or difficulty breathing may lead someone to fear another panic episode.
Treatment helps clients understand these physical reactions and reduce the fear surrounding them. Clients may practice responding differently to body sensations and gradually return to situations they have avoided.
A medical evaluation may also be recommended when physical symptoms require further clarification.
Parent Coaching and SPACE-Informed Support
Parents often adjust family routines to reduce a child or teenager’s anxiety. They may answer repeated questions, speak for the child, allow school avoidance, remove feared situations, or complete responsibilities on the child’s behalf.
These responses come from care, but repeated accommodation can reduce the child’s confidence in managing discomfort.
Back In Charge Anxiety may use principles from Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions, commonly called SPACE. This parent-based approach helps caregivers communicate support while changing reassurance, avoidance, and accommodation patterns.
Parent-focused treatment may be useful even when a child or teen is not ready to participate directly.
Anxiety Assessment and Psychological Testing
Anxiety symptoms can overlap with OCD, ADHD, depression, learning concerns, developmental differences, trauma-related symptoms, sleep problems, and medical conditions.
Back In Charge Anxiety provides assessment and psychological testing when additional diagnostic clarification is needed. The process may consider symptoms, developmental history, family concerns, school or work functioning, avoidance patterns, and the areas of life affected by anxiety.
The purpose is not only to assign a diagnosis. Assessment helps clients and families understand what may be contributing to the difficulty and which services may be most appropriate.
Recommendations may include anxiety therapy, parent support, additional testing, school accommodations, medical coordination, or another form of care.
When Anxiety Requires More Focused Support
Some clients become deeply stuck in avoidance, school refusal, panic, or family accommodation patterns. These concerns may require more structure and support than standard weekly therapy provides.
Back In Charge Jumpstart offers short-term, focused therapy programs designed to help individuals and families build momentum more quickly.
A focused program may provide concentrated education, structured practice, parent involvement, and clear plans for applying treatment strategies at home, school, or in daily life.
Program recommendations depend on the client’s symptoms, age, needs, readiness, and current level of functioning.
Experienced Anxiety Care in St. George
Back In Charge Anxiety is led by Kat Green, Ph.D., ABPP, a licensed clinical psychologist with approximately 15 years of clinical experience.
Dr. Green completed residency training in child and adolescent psychology, followed by a two-year postdoctoral fellowship in her specialty areas. She is board-certified in Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology through the American Board of Professional Psychology.
This board certification reflects advanced education, clinical experience, and demonstrated specialty competence. Dr. Green is currently the only board-certified clinical child and adolescent psychologist physically located in Utah.
The clinical team also includes Charlotte Esplin, Ph.D., PMH-C, who has approximately six years of clinical experience. Her Perinatal Mental Health Certification provides additional expertise related to mental health during pregnancy, postpartum adjustment, and parenthood. She has significant and focused training in evidence-based interventions for OCD, anxiety, couples/relationships, trauma & eating disorders in adulthood.
This background supports anxiety care grounded in psychological research, developmental needs, family relationships, and the real-life environments in which clients need to use their skills.
Start Moving Toward Life Again
Anxiety may tell you or your child to wait until everything feels safe, certain, or comfortable. Following that message can lead to more avoidance and fewer opportunities to build confidence.
Anxiety is treatable. Children, teens, adults, and families do not have to remain stuck in reassurance cycles, panic, school refusal, or fear-driven routines.
Back In Charge Anxiety provides anxiety treatment, assessment, testing, parent support, and focused care in St. George, Utah and throughout Southern Utah.
Call (435) 227-5155 to schedule a consultation and learn which service may be the right fit.
FAQs About Anxiety Treatment
in St. George, Utah
How Do I Know if Anxiety Is More Than Normal Worry?
Anxiety may require professional support when it causes significant distress, persistent avoidance, family disruption, school problems, sleep difficulties, or trouble participating in ordinary daily activities.
What Types of Anxiety Does Back In Charge Anxiety Treat?
Treatment may address excessive worry, separation anxiety, social anxiety, panic symptoms, specific phobias, selective mutism, school refusal, perfectionism, health fears, reassurance-seeking, and difficulty tolerating uncertainty.
Do You Work With School Anxiety and School Refusal?
Yes. School anxiety and school refusal often require a practical plan involving the child or teen, caregivers, and sometimes school personnel. Treatment focuses on the anxiety driving the avoidance and supports a gradual return to participation.
Do Parents Participate in Anxiety Treatment?
Parents are often involved in treatment for children and teens. Parent support may address reassurance, avoidance, family accommodation, school attendance, exposure practice, and age-appropriate independence.
Do You Treat Panic Attacks?
Yes. Panic treatment may include education about the body’s anxiety response, reduced avoidance, exposure-based strategies, and skills for responding differently to uncomfortable physical sensations.
Is Anxiety Treatment the Same for Children and Adults?
Do You Provide Anxiety Assessment and Testing?
Is Telehealth Available?
Yes. Back In Charge Anxiety offers both in-person services in St. George and telehealth treatment for eligible clients throughout Southern Utah.