Hi, my name is Sylvia Barra and I am a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) in the state of Florida. I received my Masters degree at Florida International University after many years in the mental health field. I have experience working with individuals struggling with addiction, anxiety, depression, mood disorders, adjustments and managing daily life stressors. My goal with every client is to assist achieving personal and emotional life goals.
In our first session, we begin to build the rapport process and address life challenges that are currently being faced. Once an understanding of needs for services I will be able to create a treatment plan to customize continued sessions.
My number one goal throughout my career is to ensure clients feel heard and validate their processes as their own experience. With this perspective it assist with creating individual goals that meet the unique quality of the client being served in order to create measurable outcomes.
I love working with clients who are curious of their internal processes and driven by a desire to become the best version of themselves.
CBT is a proven evidence based practice to assist with addressing and decreasing symptoms of substance use, anxiety and depression symptoms. Much success has been shown throughout sessions with client engagement and commitment to practice. I assist with breaking down distorted and intrusive thoughts and redirect the thought patterns in healthy truthful processes. Once interruption of distorted thoughts improve, mood shifts take place assisting with decreasing undesirable emotional symptoms.
Mindfulness practice assist with brining awareness into the present moment which is a struggles in modern day society. The idea is to bring back connection to the mind body connection to create open communication with and within ourselves. This allows us to slow down and turn inwards to honor what our body and our mind is trying to communicate. Creating the bridge of communication to mind and body allows mindfulness and grounding to decrease strong emotional responses to external factors.
ACT allows to decrease/interrupt the ability to run and deny internal struggles (emotions) and respect their presence and accept their existence. This assist with removing the "stuck" feeling and gain awareness to move forward. Once acceptance is understood creating a plan of commitment for change that is suitable at the present moment.
DBT is an evidence based practice for individuals who experience strong emotions and common with personality disorders and substance use. The goal is to understand emotions and learning how to self regulate to come to a calmer state. Work included in DBT is mindfulness, interpersonal relationships, managing stress, emotional regulation, boundaries and decrease in self defeating behaviors.