Interpersonal
An interpersonal relationship is one we have to any other person or behavior necessary to living our lives. These can include both family, friends, and work relationships, as well as relationships to self care and feeding. All of these relationships overlap and result in unhelpful patterns of thinking and behaviors that one arrives in therapy hoping to understand and change. In the therapeutic relationship I help you to identify these patterns so as to identify helpful coping mechanisms, in both behavior and communication, experiment with what tools we identify, and continuously edit these based upon your response and feedback.
Acceptance and commitment (ACT)
Curiosity about oneself in the therapeutic process is very helpful! Judgement is not, and, is very hard to avoid. ACT in the therapy session manifests as an encouragement to acknowledge our thoughts, feelings, urges, emotions and memories and give them room to simply be without trying to control or avoid them. I teach mindfulness based practices as therapeutic tools that help support a client to allow space for this to happen. In the spirit of ACT I aid the therapy client to explore and uncover what their goals and values are, a moral compass if you will, as a beacon to turn towards and commit to mindfully in the wake of intense emotions that are hard to tolerate. I have seen therapeutically over time that a client is almost always able to increase their psychological flexibility so that they can, in real time, respond to their thoughts and feelings in relationship to their self and others, in a manner that is more in line with the values they know themselves to have and want to emulate.
EMDR
I have been trained to practice by Laurel Parnell, a leading expert in EMDR. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing is an evidence based treatment, and one of the hardest practices to understand without experiencing it. Our responses to thoughts, relationship interactions, sounds, smells and observations can incite in us a reaction that seems disproportionately "big" to a stimulus that is relatively "small". These types of reactions are most likely connected to past trauma and negative personal experience. EMDR uses bilateral visual stimulus of the eyes, or back and forth "tapping" of hands, shoulders or knees to access and change neural relationship to the memory of a past trauma. In practice I have seen therapy clients most often experience a reduction in intense symptoms in the present, that are related to memories of traumatic events of the past.
Strength-Based
Why not lean into our strengths! We have a culture that identifies a uniform way of being, identifies personal weakness as related to this, and creates advice and products to solve these "problems". A strength based therapeutic approach identifies and develops our inner strengths, resilience, resources and aptitudes. In my experience and strength based approach in the therapy relationship increases ones sense of hope and autonomy, when we can identify the ways you can lead and contribute to family and community and receive resources based on this knowing.
Structural Family Therapy
A family system and its potential dysfunction are not attributable to any one individual, it is in fact a sum total of individuals with underlying and often unspoken power dynamics. The aim is to uncover these dynamics and shift them through improved communication. I have worked for many years with family systems, especially those including adolescents and have found this treatment approach is a relief for the participants as we move together towards improved function and communication understanding that no one person is the root of any family struggle.