Kitty McQuaid, LPC | 484-925-0528 | 30 South Valley Road, Suite 123B, Paoli, PA 19301
Therapy for Anxiety and OCD
Solution-Focused Therapy for Teens and Adults
Anxiety doesn't always show up the same way—and it certainly doesn't discriminate by age. Whether you're a woman who feels constantly on edge, a teen who dreads social situations, or a parent watching your daughter get stuck in patterns of fear and avoidance, you deserve support that actually works.
At Resilient Minds Counseling Services, I specialize in helping women and girls — and the families who love them — navigate generalized anxiety, social anxiety, separation anxiety, and OCD, using a thoughtful, evidence-based approach. Together, we'll identify what's fueling the anxiety and build concrete tools to manage it, so you or your daughter can live with more freedom and confidence.
Therapy Tailored to Your Specific Needs
Generalized Anxiety Solutions
Chronic worry, overthinking, physical tension, trouble sleeping — generalized anxiety can feel like your mind never shuts off. Living in a constant state of fight-or-flight is exhausting, and it seeps into everything. In adults, it often looks like perfectionism, irritability, or trouble concentrating. In teens, it might show up as school avoidance, pulling away from friends, or needing to sleep in a parent's bed.
Social Anxiety Solutions
For a lot of teens and women, social anxiety isn't just shyness — it's a deep, exhausting fear of being judged, embarrassed, or rejected. It can keep you from speaking up, going after opportunities, or letting people get close to you.
Separation Anxiety Solutions
This isn't just a childhood issue. While younger kids may refuse to separate from caregivers, teens and adults can struggle with it too — anxiety around being apart from the people they love, long after it's supposed to have faded.
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) Solutions
OCD isn't about being "neat" or "quirky." It involves distressing intrusive thoughts (obsessions) and the urge to perform rituals or mental acts (compulsions) to try to make the anxiety stop. In my practice, this often shows up as an inescapable fear of being judged — replaying conversations, second-guessing every interaction, needing constant reassurance that you didn't mess up. ERP, the gold-standard treatment for OCD, gives us a clear, structured way to loosen its grip.
Therapy helps you challenge anxious thought patterns and build a more grounded, flexible way of thinking. Together, we'll gently confront the fears anxiety and OCD create, and rebuild trust in yourself and your ability to connect.
My Approach to Treating Anxiety
While talk therapy can help, I firmly believe therapy works best when it moves you into action. We'll look at how anxious thought patterns are often rooted in core beliefs built over a lifetime, and work on shifting those patterns toward behavior that actually reflects the life you want. That means not just understanding your anxiety or OCD, but learning to respond to it differently — setting boundaries, facing fears gradually, or choosing actions that align with your values instead of your fear. Here's what that can look like:
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) — Our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are all connected, which means changing how you think and act can genuinely change how you feel. CBT gives us a practical, structured way to identify what's not working and build something that does — usually with clear goals and a real endpoint in sight, not therapy that goes on forever.
Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) — This is the gold-standard treatment for OCD and anxiety. You'll learn to gradually face the situations you've been avoiding, without leaning on compulsions or escape, and discover that anxiety can rise, peak, and pass on its own — without controlling your life. We always move at your pace, never faster than you're ready for.
Mindfulness-Based Strategies — Sometimes the most powerful shift is learning to notice a thought without getting tangled up in it. These tools build your ability to regulate your emotions, stay aware of what's happening in the moment, and treat yourself with more compassion along the way.
Addressing Family Accommodations through SPACE
When I'm working with a younger client, I often bring her parents into the process too. I'm trained in SPACE (Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions), an evidence-based approach that helps parents reduce the accommodations — like excessive reassurance or letting her avoid what scares her — that can unintentionally keep anxiety and OCD in place. You can read more about how SPACE works on my Parent Coaching page.