When the End of the School Year Feels Like Too Much: Finding Relief With Anxiety Therapy in Oakland
Uploaded from Unsplash on 5/30/2025
For parents in Oakland, just when you think you’re hitting your stride with routines, the school year ends—and everything shifts. The end of the school year brings more of everything - more work, more celebrations, more financial stress, more expectations, and the list goes on. Once the month of Maycember ends, you find yourself looking at a long stretch of irregular routings and perhaps increasing demands on your time and attention as you manage the summer schedule. You may have noticed yourself dreading the summer and feeling conflicted since summer is supposed to be fun (or so you were told). Schedules go out the window, kids are home more, and suddenly you’re juggling work, childcare, screen time negotiations, safety concerns, and your own rising anxiety.
If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. Many parents experience heightened anxiety during seasonal transitions like summer break. While summer promises rest and play, it can also bring stress, overstimulation, and feelings of inadequacy. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, irritable, or like you're stretched too thin, anxiety therapy in Oakland can help you feel more grounded and supported during this transition.
Why Summer Triggers So Much Anxiety for Parents: An Anxiety Therapist in Oakland Shares More
The Sudden Lack of Structure
For months, your family had a rhythm: morning routines, school pickups,after school activities, homework, get food in them and bed! Now, without that external scaffolding, your days may feel chaotic, and for many anxious parents, structure is what helps things feel manageable. Instead of getting up and moving through a predictable morning with lunch boxes and school drop-offs, you're now being interrupted frequently with request for snacks, plans that change by the hour, a to-do list that feels impossible to complete and whatever limited time you had for yourself evaporates. The mental load spikes before you’ve started your day. When the school year ends, it can feel like you’re starting from scratch every day. Even if getting up and out of the house during the school year was exhausting, there was predictability and you didn’t have to simultaneously manage the demands of work and parenting to the same degree day after day.
For parents who are prone to anxiety, a lack of external structure can feel like trying to navigate fog without a compass. The day blurs together without breaks, and you notice yourself snapping more often—even though you promised you'd be more patient this summer. Unstructured time, especially during transitions, significantly increases perceived stress in parents with pre-existing anxiety traits. Anxiety therapy in Oakland can help you rebuild gentle routines that reduce decision fatigue without demanding perfection—and bring back a sense of control that soothes the nervous system.
Screen Time Guilt and Battles
You need 30 uninterrupted minutes to fold laundry and decompress or you’re trying to work, make meals and even take five minutes to breathe. You turn on a cartoon so your child will sit still, then feel awful for not doing an art project or connecting with them through conversation instead. You begin the guilt spiral with thoughts like: “I should be more present. I should plan activities. I shouldn’t be relying on YouTube this much.” Even though this choice allowed you to function, the shame lingers.
This is a classic tension between your internalized expectations of “good parenting” and the realities of limited bandwidth. Psychodynamic therapy often explores these internal conflicts, especially when they echo early messages about worth and performance. Add in modern parenting pressures—especially for moms—and you’ve got a perfect storm for guilt. A 2020 study in the Journal of Family Psychology found that maternal guilt related to screen time is strongly associated with increased anxiety and reduced self-efficacy. Anxiety therapy in Oakland can help you challenge unrealistic internal narratives, explore the roots of your guilt, and make aligned choices without self-punishment.
Safety Worries in an Uncertain World
From school shootings to rising crime and natural disasters, the external world can feel genuinely unsafe. And for parents with their own traumas, current events often reactivate earlier fears. It’s hard to feel calm when you’re constantly evaluating risks or when your nervous system is responding to perceived danger. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, hypervigilance is a common feature of both generalized anxiety disorder and trauma responses, particularly when the environment feels unpredictable.
Your child asks to walk alone to a nearby park, but your mind spirals: You replay every worst-case scenario before finally saying no—and then second-guess yourself. Can my kids play outside safely? What about that car that was speeding down our street? Or neighborhood crime rates? Anxiety doesn’t just live in your mind—it attaches to real things happening around us. You remember having more freedom as a child and want this for your kid, but struggle with differentiating real risk from imagined threat. Anxiety therapy in Oakland gives you space rebuild a sense of internal safety, create safety routines that feel empowering rather than paralyzing and to make parenting choices from a grounded place rather than fear.
Trying to Work While Parenting Full-Time
If you don’t have consistent childcare, summer can feel like a logistical and emotional minefield. You’re asked to be both an engaged parent and a productive employee—two full-time jobs often in conflict. For example, you’re mid-Zoom meeting when your child bursts in crying because their sibling won’t share the iPad. You mute, manage the meltdown, and return to the meeting flustered, feeling judged and behind. Research from the American Psychological Association shows that role overload—when multiple roles (like parent and employee) compete for your time and energy—correlates strongly with increased anxiety, especially for women and marginalized caregivers. Strategies for role overload include: working to recognize where you’re being asked to do the impossible, setting boundaries, and asking for support without guilt.
Climate Anxiety and Summer Stressors
Rising temperatures, worsening air quality, and increased wildfire risk aren’t just environmental issues—they’re parenting stressors. Many parents in Oakland feel a deep unease about keeping their children safe and healthy during increasingly extreme summer conditions. May you are weighing whether to let your kids play outside when the Air Quality Index hits 120, and you can’t stop checking the Cal Fire app during dry heat waves. Or maybe you’ve already created a go-bag in case of evacuations—even though your home hasn’t been directly threatened yet. Your kids are disappointed, and you feel like you are letting them down or depriving them of the joy of summer—even though you are protecting them.
Climate anxiety is real, and it’s exhausting to hold on top of everything else. In therapy, we can explore ways to acknowledge your concern without spiraling into fear and helplessness, build realistic safety plans, and create space for grief and resilience.
Sensitive Parents in a Loud, Demanding World
Are you someone who feels things deeply? Who picks up on your kid’s moods, the subtle changes in routine, or the unspoken pressures around you? You don’t need to toughen up. You need support that honors your sensitivity and helps you navigate the world without shutting yourself down. If you identify as a highly sensitive person (HSP), summer can be even more overwhelming: louder noises, more people, less downtime. As a trauma-informed therapist, I often work with clients whose emotional systems register the world more intensely. After a single afternoon at the community pool, you feel overstimulated, short-tempered, and emotionally exhausted. You need silence and space—but your house is full, and your inner critic says you’re being dramatic or to “toughen up”. People who are more sensitive to sensory stimuli are more susceptible to overstimulation and emotional burnout, especially during transitions and high-demand periods.
Being more sensitive can feel like a burden at times, but it is a strength, not a flaw. You need support that honors your sensitivity and helps you navigate the world without shutting yourself down. Anxiety therapy in Oakland can help you build emotional tools that feel aligned with who you really are and allow you to thrive without numbing or shutting down.
Anxiety Therapy in Oakland Can Help You Find Your Center Again
When you’re stuck in fight-or-flight mode, it’s hard to access the part of you that knows what matters most—the part that can say no to perfectionism, yes to rest, and pause the shame spiral long enough to breathe.
In anxiety therapy, we help you:
Regulate your nervous system using tools drawn from CBT, mindfulness, and trauma-informed care
Untangle guilt from values—what do you actually believe, and what have you internalized?
Create doable summer routines that support your family (without comparing yourself to others)
Explore what anxiety is telling you, and respond to it with curiosity rather than judgment
Between economic stress (summer can be expensive!), climate worries, rising costs, and the pressure to “show up” in every area of your life, it’s no wonder anxiety is showing up, too. This is the reality for so many parents in Oakland right now.
You are not failing. The system is failing at supporting YOU. You’re doing the absolute best you can. If you’re burned out and carrying too much, you don’t need to fix everything. You just need space to take a breath—and someone who can hold it all with you.
Let’s Navigate This Season Together — Start Anxiety Therapy in Oakland
If you’re a parent in Oakland feeling overwhelmed, anxious, or just plain exhausted as summer approaches, therapy can help you feel more present, less reactive, and more like yourself again.
Uploaded from Unsplash on 5/30/2025
As a therapist specializing in anxiety therapy in Oakland, I support parents navigating the emotional rollercoaster of seasonal transitions. Together, we’ll figure out what “enough” looks like in your family—and how to reclaim some calm. Schedule a free 15-minute consultation today. Together, we’ll figure out what support looks like for you—and build toward a version of summer that feels doable, meaningful, and maybe even joyful.
Lara Clayman Anxiety Therapist Oakland
Author Bio
Lara Clayman, LCSW, is a trauma-informed, psychodynamic therapist in Oakland who supports parents and sensitive folks navigating anxiety, overwhelm, and transitions. She uses an integrative approach rooted in relational healing to help clients reconnect with their values and find calm in the chaos. She specializes in anxiety therapy in Oakland, trauma therapy and culturally sensitive therapy.
