Welcome to The Awakened Heart Therapy

In-Person Anxiety Therapy in Tempe, Somatic Therapy, and EMDR Therapy for Adults

“I wake up already tense. Before my feet hit the floor, my mind is running. What did I forget? What am I going to mess up today? How am I going to get through all of this? Part of me is always on alert. Scanning… planning. Trying to stay one step ahead of what could go wrong.”

You are the first born, or the responsible one in your family, and you put a lot of effort into holding things together. You show up. You get things done. People rely on you. Even on your hardest days, you still push through. That’s just what you do.

But inside, you feel like you’re barely holding on. Anxiety, overthinking, guilt, and pressure don’t let up. You replay mistakes late at night, and worry about disappointing people. You feel stuck in fight-or-flight. Sometimes the pressure is so intense, you freeze and can’t get anything done.

Most of the time, you feel disconnected from yourself and your emotions. But sometimes your emotions feel overwhelming or unpredictable, leaving you questioning yourself. You may look around and quietly wonder: Why does life seem easier for everyone else?

If you’re looking for a highly trained, deeply experienced anxiety therapist in Tempe who offers more than traditional talk therapy, you’re in the right place.

Is This You? The “Responsible Child” Pattern

The people who find me identify as the “responsible child” in their families—whether they were the first born child, or simply the one who learned to carry more than their share. You may be the person everyone relies on. The helper. The fixer. The one who learned to keep things running smoothly and take care of others, even when it came at the expense of yourself.

You learned, somewhere along the way, that being capable, agreeable, or helpful was necessary to feel safe, valued, or worthy. Your identity has become organized around responsibility, people-pleasing, and managing everything, making it difficult to know what you need or want for yourself.

When you struggle with this pattern, it often shows up in very specific ways:

• Fear of Failure in Therapy: You may worry that you’ll “fail” at therapy or not do it right.
• Minimizing Your Pain: You might worry that your problems aren’t “bad enough” to deserve therapy, or feel like something is fundamentally wrong with you.
• Turning Things Inward: You tend to question yourself, overthink, and try to get things right. You take on responsibility that isn’t actually yours.
• A Harsh Inner Voice: You live with an inner critic that is constantly second-guessing you or telling you that you’re not doing enough.

You have already tried to think your way through this. You are starting to realize that your nervous system needs attention and support. If you’re looking for an Anxiety therapist in Tempe, EMDR therapy in Tempe, or Somatic Therapy in Tempe, you may be looking for the missing pieces of healing that experiential therapy can provide.

Why Do I Understand So Much About Myself… But Still Feel Stuck?

Many of the clients who find me are insightful, thoughtful, and highly self-aware. The problem isn’t that you lack insight. You have spent years trying to understand yourself, turning everything inward, and becoming an expert at living “from the neck up.”

The problem is that insight alone does not calm your racing heart or change your nervous system responses to triggers.

Many people grow up learning—often without anyone saying the words—that fully feeling emotions wasn’t safe, helpful, or welcome. Over time, achieving, thinking, analyzing, planning, fixing, helping, being agreeable, or staying in control became understandable ways of protecting yourself.

Traditional talk therapy can help you understand why you feel this way. But to actually feel different, we have to move past coping strategies and work beneath the surface at the level of the nervous system.

Experiential therapy works beneath the surface, creating meaningful and lasting change.

For over 25 years, I have helped adults heal from anxiety, complex trauma, phobias, and the lasting effects of difficult childhood experiences across many clinical settings. My Tempe private practice specializes in:

• Nervous System Healing
• Anxiety Therapy
• Somatic Therapy
• Trauma Therapy
• EMDR Therapy
• Phobia Treatment

Rather than working only with thoughts, experiential therapy addresses your nervous system, your emotional experiences, and the protective patterns that keep anxiety and self-criticism stuck in place.

With 25 years of clinical experience, and over 400 hours of advanced clinical training, I am one of a small number of therapists who skillfully weaves together EMDR, somatic therapy, nervous system healing, and works with childhood responses to stress. This integrated approach goes far beyond talk therapy, helping to resolve the deeper, underlying patterns that keep anxiety trapped in place.

What It’s Like to Work With Taana?

Clients describe my therapeutic space as warm, grounding, calm, and safe. Because of my own lived experience with anxiety and trauma, along with decades of clinical practice, I bring deep empathy and nuanced understanding to every session.

Many clients seek my practice because they felt alone, confused or overwhelmed during prior EMDR therapy experiences. Experiential therapy shouldn’t mean feeling left alone to figure it out yourself. I am fully present, highly attuned, and actively guide you through the process to teach skills and build confidence at a manageable pace, without flooding your system.

Clients move from feeling anxious, self-critical, and responsible for everything…to feeling calmer, more confident, able to trust themselves, set boundaries, and be who they actually are.

They move from organizing their lives around fear and avoidance…to showing up more fully, with more ease, confidence, and self-acceptance.

My clients consistently report significant changes in how they experience themselves, their emotions, and their ability to move through their lives with authentic self-trust.

I help people who have spent years working hard to hold everything together on the outside, finally experience what it feels like to become calmer, more authentic, more grounded, and able to trust themselves again.

If you’re looking for anxiety therapy in Tempe, somatic therapy in Tempe, or EMDR therapy in Tempe, let’s do the deeper work together, so you can finally feel like the competent adult you are.

We can have a brief, no-pressure conversation to see if this feels like the right fit.

You can read more about working with Taana Abbitt (EMDR Therapist) or EMDR Therapy.