Hi! I am a licensed clinical social worker (LCSW) based in North Carolina. I received my Master's in Social Work (MSW) from the University of South Carolina at Columbia, and have been practicing for more than 30 years. My goal with my clients is to partner with them to identify where they want to grow their skills and add new ones, so that they can live their best selves.
What can clients expect to take away from sessions with you?
During the first session, after brief introductions, we'll explore what brings you here and identify some goals to work towards. I'll also ask you some questions that allow me a historical context for our work together, which allows me a better understanding of your world, and helps you to feel more known and understood. By session's end, the foundation for an effective therapy partnership will have been laid.
Explain to clients what areas you feel are your biggest strengths.
After 30+ years of clinical practice, I've learned to be humble about our shared humanity. I am not here to judge. We're all on this human journey together. This truth allows me to meet my clients where they are, with openness and compassion. And the years of experience have honed my intuition, my clinical skills and the skills I teach my clients so that we collaborate quickly and well to help clients make changes that they want to make.
Describe the client(s) you are best positioned to serve.
I work with adults 20 y/o and up who want to feel stronger in their core, to cope more effectively with their emotions and with what life brings them, and who want to unhook from the tyranny of patterned thoughts and responses that no longer work for them. I love helping people find their way through the maze to greater self acceptance and feelings of competence.
About Lynn Stanton
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Fully bookedMy treatment methods
Acceptance and commitment (ACT)
I use ACT principles to help clients identify and work towards living a life consistent with their core values, and to learn effective ways to cope with what they cannot immediately change. But I don't limit myself to ACT or to any one treatment method with a given client. This allows me the flexibility to meet each client where they actually are.
Mindfulness-Based Therapy
Mindfulness-Based Therapy paired with Cognitive Behavior Therapy helps clients begin to recognize looping thoughts that sabotage their peace and wellness, especially to the degree that someone confuses who they are with the thoughts that they have. We can't control the thoughts that flow through us, but we can learn to unhook from and coexist with them. This allows us to embrace our core selves and to make decisions based on underlying reality, not on looping thoughts and fears.
Cognitive Behavioral (CBT)
CBT-informed therapy involves recognizing patterned ways of thinking that cause suffering. For instance, a tendency to always assume the worst about self or others, or, to assume only the worst in life will happen. These are only two examples. But here's the problem: our thoughts and our bodies' fight or flight systems work hand in hand. When faced with actual danger and all works well, our bodies, brains and minds enable us to stay safe by prompting us to take necessary action on our own behalf. The problem comes when, through faulty learning, a history of trauma, or physical wiring exquisitely sensitive to stress, our bodies, brains and minds tell us we are or will be in danger when we're not. Or when people learn to feel shame/blame/inadequacy/helplessness at an early age, these thoughts loop and begin to control their very lives and life choices. CBT helps clients begin to recognize these loops, how they inform their sense of self, how they affect decision making. The good news is that thoughts are not facts, even when they contain facts. I can wake up thinking it's Tuesday when it's actually Wednesday. I can misremember the date of a commitment. Thoughts just are, and when clients develop the skills to tease all of this out, they are on their way to stronger sense of self, greater self acceptance even as they continue to grow, and a much better quality of life.
Dialectical Behavior (DBT)
DBT-informed therapy assumes that patterned, ineffective decision making and self defeating or harmful coping strategies, evolve from incomplete learning of skill sets needed to optimally function in life. This faulty learning is sometimes fueled by temperament mismatches between parents and their children or from frank trauma, which results in the future client feeling invalidated and unsafe. The client's central nervous system is constantly flooded with fight or flight signals, which can impair ability to take in new learning or ways of responding that are needed to self soothe. DBT itself is a very specialized treatment, which I can't provide as a solo practitioner. But I used to run a DBT program and worked with the clients we served. Since that time, I have integrated DBT skills (mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation and interpersonal effectiveness strategies) as needed when working with my clients, albeit without the rigor and structure of formal DBT.
Narrative
Narrative-informed therapy is sort of an off-shoot from CBT and family systems therapy, and it involves learning to recognize the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, other people and the world we live in, especially our families and other loved ones. Outdated narratives constrict our lives and cause much suffering. Recognizing our narratives allows us to unhook from them and modify them as needed to create possibility and change.