Accelerated Anxiety Treatment Program in Los Angeles
An intensive outpatient program for children, teens, and adults who need anxiety to loosen its grip faster than once-weekly therapy allows. In person in Los Angeles and surrounding areas.
Anxiety doesn’t wait for your next appointment
A week is a long time when your mind won’t let up. You get an hour, you leave with something to try, and by the time you’re back, you feel like you’ve lost any momentum and are starting back at the beginning.
Maybe you’re months into this, and the list of things you can’t do keeps getting longer. Maybe your child hasn’t made it through a full school day since fall. Maybe there’s a flight, an exam, a wedding, or a deadline on the calendar, and you can already feel yourself thinking of reasons for why you won’t make it.
Our accelerated anxiety treatment program is for people who want their life back on a shorter timeline, without putting the rest of it on hold to get there.
Find the right anxiety therapist for you
When Does It Make Sense To Accelerate Anxiety Treatment?
When anxiety starts affecting school days, work hours, sleep, or the things you used to say yes to, one session a week can struggle to get ahead of it. In the accelerated program, we use exposure and response prevention (ERP), CBT, and ACT at a pace where each session builds on the last, so progress compounds instead of resetting between appointments.
SIGNS THE ACCELERATED PROGRAM MAY BE A FIT FOR YOU OR YOUR CHILD:
- Panic attacks that come out of nowhere
- A child or teen who won't go to school
- Intrusive thoughts you can't say out loud
- Test anxiety or performance anxiety before something you can't reschedule
- Social anxiety keeping you out of the room
- Hours lost to checking, counting, washing, or asking for reassurance
- A trip, a deadline, or an event you're already dreading
- A work or school leave that keeps getting extended
- Family plans that bend around what you can tolerate
- A jaw and shoulders that stay clenched all day
- Stomachaches, migraines, or a racing heart with no medical cause
- Lying awake because your mind won't shut down
- Coming out of IOP or residential care and needing more than weekly sessions
We Build The Accelerated Anxiety Treatment Program Around The Person, Not The Diagnosis
Whether you’re an adult who’s been managing this for years and is finally out of workarounds, a parent watching your teen stop going to school, or a family that’s rearranged bedtime, mornings, and weekends around one child’s fear, we work with people who are right where you are now.
At Straight Up Treatment, we build each accelerated program around the person in it. Here’s what that tends to look like.
Adults
Most adults come to us having tried therapy already. You’ve been holding a job, showing up for people, and handling more than anyone around you knows about. Maybe you’re on a leave of absence, and the return date keeps moving. Maybe you’re still working, but the panic attacks have started deciding where you’ll drive and who you’ll see. Anxiety takes up more of the day than it used to, and the strategies that got you this far aren’t getting you any further. In the accelerated program, we work around your schedule so you can do intensive treatment without stepping away from your job or your family to do it, and you have support between sessions when something comes up mid-week.
Teens
Anxiety can make the teenage years, which are already a lot, much harder. Getting to class, sitting an exam, speaking up in a group, or walking into a party can feel impossible, and avoiding all of it brings relief that lasts about an hour. School refusal usually starts small, with one missed Monday, and gets harder to interrupt the longer it goes. Parents often see the irritability and the closed door without seeing what’s underneath it. In the accelerated program, teens get a clear explanation of what’s happening in their brain and skills they can use on their own, and parents get specific guidance for the moments that are hardest, like 7:00 on a school morning.
Children
When a child is anxious, the whole family ends up involved. You answer the same question every night, check the thing they need checked, and adjust plans to keep the evening from falling apart. That’s called accommodation. It’s a loving response, and anxiety learns to rely on it. This is where SPACE comes in. SPACE is a parent-based treatment, so you come to the sessions instead of asking a young child to do exposure work they aren’t ready for. You learn how to respond in a way that’s warm and firm at the same time, and your child’s anxiety gets room to come down. When family support matters to your child’s goals, we bring everyone into the room together.
Anxiety has taken up enough of your mind and your life. We can help you get some of it back.
Who We Are
Why Work With Straight Up Treatment?
Dr. Christine Izquierdo
Owner & Lead Therapist
Licensed Psychologist
We do things differently.
Blending cutting-edge treatments with time-honored methods, we create an integrative approach that is personally tailored to your needs.
We believe that therapy isn’t just about treating the symptoms—it’s about mastering how you handle them. It’s about leaning into the scary parts and facing them in a way that allows you to emerge stronger on the other side.
Our team boosts your courage when working with difficult emotions to create the level of self-awareness and confidence you need to live your potential.
At Straight Up Treatment, we offer therapy that is:
- Tailored to you
- Results-focused
- Integrative
- Values-driven
Our Approach
How The Accelerated Anxiety Treatment Program Works
You might be in the middle of a crisis, stepping down from IOP or residential care, or facing a date on the calendar you can’t move. We’ll walk you through the plan before we ask you to do anything hard.
This is the same evidence-based anxiety treatment we offer in standard care, delivered often enough that each session builds on the last. Every session is one-to-one, and the plan is built for you.
Starting The Same Week
We work quickly to go from your phone consult to intake within the same week. In the first evaluation, we’ll map your triggers, what you've been avoiding, and the reassurance or rituals keeping the cycle going, then build your plan together from there.
Building The Foundation
Before exposure work starts, we build the skills that make it doable, using CBT for the thinking patterns and ACT for sitting with discomfort. Between sessions, you’ll have unlimited text and email coaching with Dr. Christine Izquierdo, so a hard Tuesday doesn't have to wait until Thursday.
Running Exposures, Then Stepping Down
Three 90-minute sessions a week, over four to six weeks, gives ERP room to build. We'll start with your most prominent challenge, adjust as you go, and coach the people closest to you on how to help when OCD asks them for reassurance. When you're ready for a slower pace, you can continue with someone on our team, or we'll consult with your outside therapist and hand off a relapse-prevention and family coaching plan so the work holds.
Let's shorten the timeline.
Accelerated Anxiety Management Program in Los Angeles
What You Can Expect From The Accelerated Anxiety Treatment Program
Clients who complete the accelerated anxiety treatment program often find they can:
- Spend time on things they enjoy instead of on managing symptoms
- Move through the day without the physical toll of constant bracing
- Lean on family who know how to help without feeding the cycle
- Keep the momentum going with a relapse-prevention plan and a clear next step
- Get back to school or work, and stay there
- Travel, present, sit an exam, or commit to something without planning an exit first
- Sleep through the night without the same loop running
- Notice an intrusive thought, let it pass, and keep the rest of the day
- Catch an anxiety spiral early, while it's still small
Anxiety management is more sustainable when the skills belong to you, and the program is built to give you enough practice that they do.
Questions About Our Accelerated Anxiety Treatment Program
Is this only for severe anxiety, or does it help mild to moderate anxiety too?
Clients come to us at every severity level. Some can’t get to work or school, or are losing hours a day to rituals. Others are managing well enough on paper and facing one specific thing they need to get through, like a flight, an exam, a performance, or a deadline. The intensity of the program adjusts to match what you’re dealing with and how quickly you want to deal with it.
How is this different from IOP or residential treatment?
Think of residential care as the hospital, IOP as urgent care, and standard weekly therapy as your primary care doctor. Our accelerated program fills the gap in between.
Residential programs ask you to live on site for 30 to 90 days. IOPs run a minimum of nine hours a week, mostly in groups, for eight to twelve weeks. Both are structured programs you have to fit into, and both usually mean stepping away from work, school, or family. Many are generalized mental health programs rather than specialized anxiety and OCD treatment.
Our accelerated anxiety treatment program is individual, one-to-one, and built around your specific symptoms and goals, with a small team focused on one client at a time. It’s designed as a bridge, not a replacement. If your symptoms would be better served by a higher level of care, we’ll tell you.
Do I have to take time off work or school?
The program is designed so you don’t have to. Sessions are in person in Los Angeles, three 90-minute blocks a week, and we build the schedule with you around your existing commitments. That said, this is intensive work, and there’s practice between sessions. We’ll be upfront during the consult about what the four to six weeks will ask of you.
How fast will I see results?
We’d rather be straight with you than hand you a number. Many clients begin noticing a shift in distress and in how much anxiety is interfering with their day once they’ve been in the active ERP phase for a week or two, though this varies with severity, how much is going on at once, and how much practice happens between sessions. What the pace does reliably give you is early information. You won’t spend months wondering whether the treatment is working or whether it’s the right fit.
We've already tried therapy, and it didn't help. Why would this be different?
A lot of people get a version of anxiety therapy that’s too general and open-ended to move specific anxiety symptoms. Weekly sessions also leave a lot of room for old patterns to return before a new skill has had a chance to hold.
With anxiety and OCD, it’s common for exposure work to get softened into something more bearable in the moment, avoiding the hardest situations or easing off too early, which is also the point where it stops working. This accelerated anxiety treatment program runs frequently enough that progress builds instead of resetting, and we put the foundation in place first so we can lean into the exposures that move the needle. When people close to you have been accommodating the anxiety, adjusting plans or offering constant reassurance, we work with them too, because good support at home protects the work and the wrong kind can undo an hour of it in five minutes.
If therapy felt like it failed, there’s a good chance the format and the approach were the problem, not you.
What if my child or teen doesn't want treatment?
This is what SPACE was built for. We work with you directly to reduce the accommodation patterns keeping the cycle going, and that shift often creates enough movement that your child becomes more open to participating. Many kids who refused outright get curious once they’ve felt some relief, and once it isn’t being asked of them in the middle of a crisis.
What happens once the accelerated phase ends?
You step down to a standard outpatient schedule and keep working toward your goals. If you continue with someone on our team, they carry the momentum forward. If you’d rather return to an outside therapist, we consult with them, and we send you both a relapse-prevention plan along with ongoing treatment recommendations, so the progress you made has somewhere to go. For clients who came to us from IOP or residential care, we serve as the step-down support.
What does the accelerated anxiety treatment program cost?
The program is priced as a package rather than by the session, and four weeks generally runs between $8,000 and $10,000 depending on how your program is built. That’s typically well below the cost of a comparable stretch in IOP or residential care. We’re an out-of-network practice, and we provide monthly superbills you can submit to your insurance for possible reimbursement. Our client coordinator can walk you through all of it before you commit.
Still have questions?
Straight Up Treatment
Ready to get started?
If you’re ready to get started, please schedule a free phone consultation with our client coordinator. We will understand your needs and ensure we are a good fit before booking your first treatment planning appointment. Use the button below to book directly online. You can also call us or submit a request via the contact form. We look forward to connecting with you!
Call Us
(424) 777-0520
Send Us A Message
1180 S Beverly Dr # 750, Los Angeles, CA 90035, United States
