Have you ever felt misunderstood by family and friends? Find it difficult to trust others including professionals? Have difficulty being seen as a person and not your condition? Do you feel alone? Do you struggle with adapting and accepting your chronic illness or chronic pain? Let's talk! I can help you build tools to gain strength and confidence in managing your personal challenges. I empower adults with chronic illness/ pain or a history of abuse to take back their control and create healthy supports in order to stay on a path towards healing. Our experiences with our body or from how others treat us create unhealthy pathways for self regulation often exhibited as anger or anxiety. The compassion and guidance I provide will rewire those pathways allowing you to be the best version of yourself. In our sessions together, we will work on making small manageable changes through mindfulness, changing behaviors and embracing a positive healthy mindset. It’s often scary to start therapy for the first time or even to go back to therapy but it is the best self care gift you can give to yourself.
In our first session, we will start with a brief introduction and what brought you to therapy. Then we will dive deeper into the issues that create barriers to living a happy and full life. Afterwards, we will talk about your expectations of therapy and form a treatment plan that meets you where you are at and is achievable. Hopefully, you will feel heard and validated through out the experience giving you encouragement to come back and work with me.
Being able to meet people with respect, compassion, and an open space has encouraged trust and openness with my clients who have chronic illness or past trauma. I understand that chronic illness can be difficult to manage when your emotions are all over the place and no one seems to really know what it feels like or understand the constant burden. It often seems like it's impossible to have it all under control all of the time and it is. It is challenging to know when to accept our limitations and when we can do better but often it is all about learning how to listen to yourself rather than trying to prove something to other people. I can help you navigate the heavy emotional and mental health challenges that coincide with all illnesses/ and or chronic pain.
I find that ACT is extremely useful with chronic illness. It helps you to accept the things you can not change and commit to take control of what the things you change.
I work with clients to teach them the DBT skills through talk therapy and work sheets in order to help client regulate emotions and manage/ tolerate stress.
I have found that my most successful clients started with affirmations and changing negative thoughts. This helps boost self esteem and empower them to become more involved in their day to day experiences.
EFT focuses on how your emotions drive have your behavior in the past and when you come to treatment. We work on addressing those emotions and understanding what they are and why they surfacing. This helps clients to better understand the motivation behind their behaviors and find a way to move forward.