CBT Therapy for Anxiety in NYC | Manhattan CBT
Looking for anxiety therapy in NYC using CBT?
At the Manhattan Center for Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, we specialize in treating anxiety disorders, including panic, OCD, and excessive worry. Contact us today to be matched with a CBT therapist in New York City.
Anxiety Therapy in NYC: What We Treat
- Panic attacks and panic disorder
- OCD
- Excessive worry
- Social anxiety
- Health anxiety or hypochondria
- Phobias
- PTSD and other aftereffects of traumatic experiences
Work with a CBT Therapist in NYC
Our therapists specialize in cognitive-behavioral therapy for anxiety and are trained to deliver evidence-based treatment tailored to your specific concerns. We work with individuals dealing with panic, OCD, social anxiety, and other anxiety-related difficulties.
Therapy is available in-person in our Manhattan office and via telehealth throughout New York and several other states. Whether you know you’re dealing with a specific anxiety disorder or just know that anxiety is generally a problem for you, we’ll help you develop a clear, practical plan for improvement.
What to Expect from CBT Sessions
Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) for anxiety is typically structured, practical, and focused on helping you make meaningful changes as efficiently as possible. In your sessions, you and your therapist will work together to identify the specific patterns — such as anxious thoughts, avoidance behaviors, or habits — that fuel your anxiety. From there, you’ll develop a clear plan for how to address them.
Sessions often involve learning and practicing new skills. For example, you might work on responding differently to anxious thoughts, gradually facing situations or emotions you’ve been avoiding, or building habits that reduce your level of anxiety. CBT feels more active and goal-oriented than traditional therapy. Rather than only talking about problems, you’ll be working toward concrete changes.
CBT also typically includes exercises to practice between sessions. These are designed to help you apply what you’re learning in real-life situations, where change actually happens. Over time, these new ways of thinking and responding tend to feel more natural, and anxiety becomes easier to manage.
Throughout the process, your therapist will guide you, help you stay on track, and adjust the approach based on what’s working best for you. The goal is not just to understand your anxiety, but to give you the tools to respond to it differently.
Anxiety can take many different forms, and effective therapy depends on understanding which form(s) you have. Below are some of the common anxiety problems we treat at our NYC practice using CBT.
Which Type of Anxiety Do You Have?
Worry
Excessive worry can feel constant and difficult to control, but it responds well to CBT. In therapy, we focus on helping you change the patterns of thinking that keep worry going, so it becomes less frequent and less disruptive.
Panic Attacks
Panic attacks can be extremely distressing, but they are also highly treatable with CBT. In therapy, we help you change how you respond to panic symptoms so they become less frequent and less intense.
Phobias
The most common phobias involve animals, insects, heights, blood, needles, enclosed spaces and flying. These phobias respond well to behavior therapy.
Social Anxiety
Social anxiety involves anxiety that happens in specific social situations. Common settings where social anxiety arises include: giving a presentation, conversations with an authority figure at work, or going to parties where you don’t know many of the guests.
People with social anxiety tend to avoid these situations or endure them with difficulty. Fortunately, CBT is effective for up to 75% of people with social anxiety disorder.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Sometimes anxiety symptoms that affect our lives are related to a distressing event from our past. Sometimes the link is obvious, sometimes it’s not. Fortunately, CBT offers multiple effective treatment options for people with PTSD.
Obsessions And Compulsions: OCD
Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) occurs when someone has either obsessions or compulsions or both.
Compulsions are repeated behaviors such as cleaning, washing, checking, reviewing or counting things. Obsessions are thoughts that produce immediate, significant anxiety and often an immediate urge to figure something out. There is a specific type of CBT therapy, exposure and response prevention, that’s effective for OCD.
Anxiety Treatment Options
Treatment for anxious people has improved substantially in the past 40 years. We now have a solid scientific understanding of which types of therapies work best for various types of anxiety. We also have medications that were not available decades ago.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
Extensive research studies of various psychotherapies have shown cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) to be the most effective therapy for anxiety. (Learn more on our CBT informational page.) CBT refers to a family of therapies that focus on helping you change your thought patterns, your reactions to situations, and your choices in the service of reducing anxiety. Therapies like exposure therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, cognitive processing therapy, and habit reversal training are all types of CBT.
Exposure Therapy
Exposure therapy is an effective treatment for phobias and related disorders. This form of cognitive-behavioral therapy (sometimes referred to as graduated exposure) involves gradually and purposefully coming into repeated contact with something that causes anxiety. This can be a feeling, emotion, or thing. Exposure therapy is used for OCD (in this context it’s known as exposure and response prevention therapy), panic disorder, and PTSD. Aspects of it are often part of CBT for other types of anxiety such as social anxiety and generalized anxiety disorder, and emotion regulation problems
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
Acceptance and commitment therapy (also known as ACT) is a type of cognitive-behavioral therapy. It is effective for many emotional difficulties. It teaches people to create a different relationship with their thoughts. This helps with problems that are driven by unhealthy thinking. It also helps people to examine whether their actions and choices are consistent with what they value.
Cognitive Processing Therapy
Cognitive processing therapy (CPT) is a treatment for PTSD. CPT helps PTSD sufferers examine their thinking about the traumatic event, about themselves, about the world and other people. In so doing, the therapy creates powerful change that can drastically improve PTSD. Recently, a journalist brought attention to this therapy by recounting CPT’s effects in a 2019 NPR podcast.
Habit Reversal Training
Habit reversal training (HRT) is a type of therapy used for tics and for hair pulling and skin picking. HRT systematically teaches people to become more aware of the tic or hair pull, e.g. Then it gives them behavioral strategies to then prevent the tick or other behavior from occurring. This type of treatment is quite effective for tics, hair pulling, and skin picking.
For any type of CBT, the first step in treatment is diagnosis. An evaluation with a CBT therapist will provide this information and determine the best treatment options for your type of anxiety.
Medication
SSRIs
Research has shown that for many types of anxiety, medication can be almost as effective or as effective as CBT. Perhaps the most commonly prescribed type of medication for anxiety disorders are called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). SSRIs cause more serotonin, a naturally occurring chemical in the brain, to have a greater impact on the cells of the brain. Prozac, Luvox, Celexa, and Zoloft are all examples of SSRIs.
Benzodiazepines
Benzodiazepines are quite different from SSRIs. They are fast-acting, so their effects are typically felt in less than an hour. They are also potentially habit forming, unlike SSRIs and SNRIs. Examples of benzodiazepines include Valium, Xanax, Klonopin and Ativan. Benzodiazepines are not a good long-term solution for anxiety. However, when combined with other treatment they can be a helpful short term solution.
SNRIs
A related class of medications called serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs) is less commonly used. Effexor, Cymbalta, and Pristiq are all examples of SNRIs. These medications are generally considered safe and not addictive.
Anxiety Therapy and Other Treatments: Summary
There are pros and cons to using CBT vs. medications to treat anxiety. CBT requires more time and effort. However, the skills you learn will help for a long time. Although medications affect your brain chemistry, they do not fix the processes and habits that led to the anxiety. Hence, their benefits last only as long as you take the medication.
We are fortunate to have various options available for help with anxiety, each with their different advantages and disadvantages. Remember that there are several different types of anxiety; make sure that the treatment you choose works well for your particular type of anxiety.
Finding Help
Please contact us if we can help you in your efforts to find anxiety therapy here in New York. Our CBT therapists are doctoral-level psychologists. We also have student therapists who offer reduced-fee services. Our offices are in midtown Manhattan, but we offer teletherapy services to people elsewhere in New York State, New Jersey, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Virginia and Florida. If you’re looking for CBT therapy in another part of the country or world, please contact us — we are happy to help!
Last updated: April 27th, 2026