As a Pennsylvania Licensed Professional and Board Certified Counselor with over ten years of non-profit direct care mental health experience, I have provided services to individuals ranging in ages 3-65+ years, addressing a wide variety of concerns across all levels of care. With a strong clinical background, supervisory experience and a deeper understanding of managed care gained through experience with utilization review, I am able to provide a more comprehensive experience for those I serve.
What can clients expect to take away from sessions with you?
Our first session, or intake session, is meant to be like an orientation to treatment. We will start by discussing standards and expectations of treatment, in addition to discussing what brought you into treatment, before working through a structured questionnaire to help assess all areas of your life to see what is contributing to the identified issue(s) and what is already working to help resolve the issue(s). As a result, an intake session will tend to be a little longer, approximately 90 minutes, and more structured compared to your standard session in order to ensure we walk away with the most complete idea of what our overall all treatment goals will be, including what discharge/ end of treatment will look like for you. By the end of the intake session the goal is to have identified your "focus areas" for therapy in preparation for exploration in sessions to come.
Explain to clients what areas you feel are your biggest strengths.
I believe that for one to successfully engage in therapy, they only need to have the willingness to be open and honest with oneself, an act made easier when you partner with a skilled clinician who can help to guide you along your journey. Due to my experience in community behavioral health settings, my skill set enables me to engage with a wide variety of individuals to address various psychological and social stressors including but not limited to life transitions, mood disorders, grief/ loss, anger management, addiction, relational concerns and more. Practicing from an Existential framework, I am able to more effectively tailor treatment to meet you wherever you are on your personal journey, no matter the topic that brings you in for your first session. By focusing on the here and now, enhancing the skills you already have, and integrating a mind body approach, we will help you to meet your goals.
About Marina Burkhardt
Identifies as
Licensed in
Accepts cash
Appointments
VirtualMy treatment methods
Existential
I start by learning more about how you experience the world because in order to help you work through your identified issue, I need to be able to see your world through your eyes so that we can curate your own personal tool box to help you reach your goals.
Mind-body approach
Like Bessel van der Kolk, MD explains, The Body Keeps Score, I believe that if left unaddressed long enough, stress will begin to take a physical toll on your body. Sometimes the best way to accomplish our goal is to take a step back and identify what our body is trying to tell us with the use of techniques such as Mindfulness and Meditation.
Reality Therapy
There are times where looking backwards and exploring past events just leaves you feeling stuck. As a result, when needed I help you to refocus by putting a pause on exploration and discussion of the past in order to hone in on what is going on in your "here and now" and applying Cognitive Behavioral Therapy skills to help you overcome your hurdle.
Solution Focused Brief Treatment
Therapy is not always meant weekly session till the end of forever. There are going to be times when you know exactly what you are struggling with and want to address it and move one. By focusing on positive factors that are already contributing to the situation, we enhance what is already working to get you to your goal that much faster.
Strength-Based
No matter the issue, I believe there is something that you are already doing that is helping you and because of this, we will work to leverage that in order to help you learn other skills and strategies that will enable you to work to your ideal solution.