Welcome Clients

Dr. McMahon has stopped taking new clients. Her old client information appears below.

Anxiety Specialist

Anxiety can take many different forms. If feeling anxious, having a panic attack, worrying about a panic attack, or fearing a specific activity or situation is causing you significant distress or preventing you from doing things that are important to you, then you will benefit from doing something about your anxiety. 

I focus on treating anxiety issues and I provide specialized treatment that may include using virtual reality (VR) as part of therapy (see Benefits of VR Therapy). In general, anxiety therapy can be very effective. For many clients, overcoming their anxiety is life changing.

However, you may not need to start by seeing a specialist such as myself. If you are not sure about your next steps, I suggest reading Alternatives to Anxiety Therapy and exploring self-help options that you can start with immediately. 

What to Expect

We will start with a screening phone call where we learn a little about each other, see what you are interested in working on, and decide if I am a suitable therapist for you. Although I would like to be able to treat everyone, my practice does have limits as outlined below (see California Only, Private Pay, and Teletherapy Only). 

If we decide to work together, we will schedule a 90-minute first session and I will provide you with my standard new client paperwork. I may also ask you to start reading Overcoming Anxiety and Panic interactive guide or to prepare certain information for our first session.

During our first session, I will learn more about your history and what you hope to gain from therapy. We will agree on a plan for treatment that typically includes 4-8 sessions and focuses on one specific anxiety issue. We will also decide if we are likely to use virtual reality as part of therapy, in which case you may need to obtain an inexpensive smartphone holder so you can use your phone as a VR headset (see Preparing for Teletherapy and VR Therapy).

Therapy sessions are 60 minutes and typically include checking in on progress or changes since our previous meeting, working on the current focus for treatment, and assigning things for you to do between sessions to speed your progress and make therapy more effective and shorter. If we are using VR as part of therapy, we may not use VR in every session.

After you have met your initial treatment goals, or we have completed our agreed upon number of sessions, we will reevaluate our progress and agree upon next steps. If we are addressing a single issue, such as a specific fear or phobia, treatment may be completed at this point. If you have additional issues that you would like to work on, we may shift to your next issue and plan another series of sessions. 

This process is very flexible and seeks to balance your desire to work on issues, your ability to participate in therapy, and my availability. Some clients are finished after a few sessions, some clients like to check in periodically, and some clients are dealing with issues that require longer-term treatment. 

California Only

As a clinical psychologist licensed by the state of California, I can only treat residents of California. 

Private Pay

My practice is private pay; this allows us to focus on the issues that are most important to you, without concern for the requirements or limits imposed by managed care. Please plan to pay after each meeting by check, Visa, or MasterCard. I am happy to provide a Superbill receipt if you want to request reimbursement from your insurance. Health Savings Accounts (HSA) and similar tax-favored plans can be used to pay for my psychologist services.

Teletherapy Only

Currently I am only seeing clients via teletherapy where we talk using a secure video link similar to Zoom. The pandemic forced the change to teletherapy but teletherapy has turned out to be both convenient and effective. Clients prefer teletherapy because it eliminates all the hassle and wasted time involved travelling to my office, parking, etc. 

We do VR therapy during teletherapy by using one device for the video session (usually a computer or laptop) and one for the VR headset. For the VR headset, we generally use your smartphone and an inexpensive smartphone adapter. See Preparing for Teletherapy and VR Therapy for details.