Good therapy is built on connection! Are you in a relationship where you feel you’re not being heard, or you’re tired of the same issues coming up, or someone has been unfaithful, and you agonize over how you could ever rebuild what you two had before? Do you feel like you’re in a constant struggle with worry… perfectionism... low motivation… panic… unpredictable moods…or with your past? Is the daily struggle dragging down your quality of life? If you experience any of the following: anxiety, depression, mood disorders, self-harm... personality disorders,... family and relationship difficulty,... betrayal... parenting issues... or trauma, and feel like you are just trying to get through the day I offer consulting and psychotherapy services covering most diagnostic problems. I work with individuals, families, and couples aged 10 to 99. Along with traditional talk psychodynamic psychotherapy, I incorporate Somatic Experiencing (SE®) to gently help you come out of a perpetual fight/flight, freeze, or fawn state and feel more like yourself. These body-based approaches will help increase your capacity to face life’s anxieties, lack of joy, and low mood much more rapidly and effectively than talk therapy alone; allowing you to live your life with resilience and more ease. I am also a trained EMDR Therapist and Couples Therapist. If you are seeking to change your life’s direction, improve your career, or enhance your relationships, I can teach you how to have better insight into your own life to accomplish these above goals and more. If you are ready for change, come talk and let's begin a journey that will transform you and your future.
What can clients expect to take away from sessions with you?
During the first sessions, the purpose is to help the client and your therapist get to know each and to help you decide if you think the relationship will be a good fit. While it can often be nerve-wracking to sit down with someone new, it’s an important step in the process toward mental well-being.How do you approach helping people? Do you have experience working with people who have concerns like mine? Do you make treatment plans? If you do, will I be involved in creating and monitoring mine? What can I expect during the first session and subsequent sessions? What will you expect of me? Will I have homework?
What treatment methods and tools do you utilize?
I love to learn new techniques that can help clients, so in 2019 I trained in S.A.F.E. (Somatic and Attachment focused) EMDR and am enrolled in a two-year Advanced EMDR Certification program approved by EMDRIA. For 2022-23 I am a 3rd-year student in Dr. Peter Levine’s Somatic Experiencing® Trauma Therapy (gentle and effective treatments for trauma resolution) Certification program. I am a member of the Sandtray Institute and before Covid 2020 worked with most ages in sandtray therapy as well as family & couples therapy. For a year I studied with The Couples Institute for couples therapy training for a year. Psychodynamic, Self-Psychology, Object Relations & Systems Family Therapy are my foundational lens while utilizing Somatic Experiencing (SE), EMDR, and Attachment work.
Explain to clients what areas you feel are your biggest strengths.
I am trained in Somatic Experiencing Therapy, EMDR, and Psychodynamic Psychotherapy. I see individuals, couples, and families. I use a brain-based approach to therapy and incorporate Somatic Experiencing Therapy. I teach couples about their attachment styles and how to have those difficult conversations, how to heal from betrayal, infidelity, and rebuild trust. I can assist you in how to communicate with one another to encourage a sense of safety and connection. I work in the transference/countertransference for those who experienced ruptures or losses in early childhood that led to personality disorders and relationship challenges. I can teach you how to release trauma stored in your body by tracking your nervous system, locating energy trapped in your body, tracking it, and moving the energy out that can contribute to a host of physical and mental problems such as muscle tightness, reduced immunity, headaches, stomach aches, TMJ, anxiety, panic, feelings of numbness, shutdown, shame, angry outbursts, OCD, addictive behaviors while rebuilding your resiliency to stress. In 1989 I started my work as a therapist with combat veterans and survivors of childhood sexual abuse. My expertise as a trauma therapist has grown drastically since then. My biggest strengths are working with chronic and acute Complex Trauma, PTSD, military, combat, childhood trauma, childhood wounding, relationship problems, betrayal trauma, domestic violence, and acute traumas such as auto wrecks, sexual assault, medical, dental, I also treat anxiety, depression, mood disorders, personality disorders, and narcissistic abuse. First, we work with the biology, the physiology of what is presenting as a problem, symptom, or issue. You can begin to understand why you do the things you do and why you feel the way you feel. You will begin to see that many times what you are feeling is a normal reaction to an abnormal situation. Once we have mastered these initial top-down (working with the prefrontal cortex or thinking, logical part of the brain) components of the therapy, we will move on to look at your triggers, your self-limiting beliefs, and how those are connected to your presenting problems when you came to therapy. My top-down approaches look to shift the way a client thinks; veering you away from unhelpful rumination and encouraging curiosity for your reactions. You will learn some tools and practices for coping, stabilizing, and then we will move to bottom-up therapeutic approaches to zero in on our felt sense in our body, our raw emotions and defense systems by incorporating polyvagal-informed somatic experiencing, creative expression, and EMDR therapy to modulate your system. As we connect with the body, your body becomes a safe place again or maybe for the first time. We start to inhabit our body in a new way and there is more energy for life again. As we address the brain stem by way of the body and nervous system, we move upward up to the mid-brain, the limbic system where the amygdala (our "emotional brain") hijack is located. Expressive therapies, movement therapies, and EMDR can be used to take the emotional charge off old, unprocessed, unarchived distressing memories that get triggered in our present life. We can also neutralize the self-limiting beliefs that hold you back in the present, that dysregulate you into low self-esteem and lack of confidence, those negative cognitions such as "I'm not enough" which you know logically are not true, but they "feel" like they are true.
Describe the client(s) you are best positioned to serve.
Individuals Couples Teens and kids (age 9 and up) if they can make use of telehealth/teletherapy. I prefer female dlients. I think teen boys often need a male therapist to help them learn about being a male and growing into an adult male. I can and have treated adolescent boys; I just tend to think they can relate to a male therapist better. So if you don't have a male therapist, I can see them. military combat Any trauma Hindu culture - I have traveled there and am familiar with Africian American, I am very comfortable with LGBTQ, not a member of the community but my child is and I am vicariously through her.