If you’ve been searching for an anxiety therapist for women in Waco TX you’ve come to the right place.

by Hannah Short, LCSW | Rooted & Nourished Psychotherapy | Waco, TX

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You did the research. You went to the seminars. You got cleared by your surgeon, your dietitian, your primary care doctor. You had the surgery — and honestly? For a while, things felt hopeful.

But now, months (or years) later, something feels off.

Maybe it’s the anxiety that won’t quit, even though you thought losing weight would calm it down. Maybe it’s the way food still feels loaded and complicated. Maybe it’s the strange grief of not feeling like yourself — even in a body you worked so hard for.

You’ve Googled “anxiety therapist near me.” You’ve scrolled Psychology Today. You’ve maybe even started with someone who seemed fine.

But they don’t really get it, do they?

The gap no one talks about

Here’s what I see over and over in my work with women post-bariatric surgery: the mental and emotional side of this journey is deeply underserved.

Most therapists are trained to treat anxiety and depression in a general sense. Very few understand the specific experience of someone who has restructured their relationship with food at a biological level — and what that does to your nervous system, your identity, your emotional world.

Bariatric surgery changes more than your stomach. It changes:

• How your brain responds to food and stress — the gut-brain connection is real, and surgery shifts it
• Your sense of self — who are you when your body looks different but the anxiety is still there?
• Your relationship with eating — which was probably already complicated before surgery
• How you cope — if food was ever a comfort or a numbing mechanism, surgery removes that option without replacing it

When you show up in a general therapist’s office and try to explain all of this, you often end up spending half the session educating them. That’s exhausting. And it means you never quite get to the real work.

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What anxiety actually looks like after bariatric surgery

It doesn’t always look like panic attacks or constant worry (though it can). For a lot of the women I work with, it shows up as:

• Hypervigilance around food choices — obsessing over every bite
• Fear of weight regain that feels consuming
• Social anxiety around eating in public or at restaurants
• Feeling disconnected from your body even after significant weight loss
• A low hum of dread that something is going to go wrong
• Emotional eating urges that feel confusing and shameful after surgery

None of this means you failed. It means your nervous system is doing what nervous systems do — trying to protect you — in a body that’s been through something major.

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Why a trauma-informed, nervous-system-focused approach matters

Anxiety isn’t just a thought problem. It lives in the body.

That’s why traditional talk therapy — where we just talk about what’s stressing you out — often doesn’t touch the deeper layer. If your nervous system is stuck in a pattern of dysregulation, no amount of cognitive reframing is going to fully shift it.

In my work, I use a trauma-informed, nervous-system-focused approach that helps you:

• Understand why your anxiety shows up the way it does (not as a character flaw — as a pattern with roots)
• Build your capacity to tolerate difficult emotions without food, restriction, or avoidance
• Gently process the experiences that are keeping your system stuck
• Reconnect with your body in a way that feels safe, not threatening

This is different from just “managing” anxiety. It’s about actually healing the underlying patterns so that life after surgery can feel like what you hoped it would.

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You Deserve an Anxiety Therapist for Women Who Gets This

If you’re a woman navigating anxiety after bariatric surgery — whether you’re still in the early months or years down the road — you don’t have to piece this together alone.

You deserve support from someone who understands the full picture: the surgery, the emotional complexity, the body image piece, the way trauma and food and nervous system regulation all intersect.

That’s exactly what I do at Rooted & Nourished Psychotherapy, right here in Waco, TX — and virtually throughout Texas.

If this resonates, I’d love to connect. You can learn more about working with me or reach out to schedule a consultation [here].

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Hannah Short is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) and Board-Certified Bariatric Counselor based in Waco, Texas. She specializes in bariatric surgery preparation and recovery, disordered eating, postpartum adjustment, and body image — with a trauma-informed, nervous-system-focused approach. She sees clients in person at her Lake Air Drive office and virtually throughout Texas.