Therapy that's approachable, effective and down to earth.
Together, we can help you to
Overcome your anxiety
We will begin by exploring the causes, symptoms and triggers of your individual anxiety. We will then try different approaches to begin battling this anxiety. For example, we may take a Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) approach, and find ways to help you challenge these thoughts (cognitions) when they happen and try behavioral strategies, like mindfulness, to help your mind and body to relax when your anxiety is triggered. We may also try disentangling the negative core belief that triggers your anxiety, such as "I am not good enough" or "I am not safe," through Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy (I promise to explain this in English when we meet if it is an appropriate model for you).
Manage your depression
We will begin by exploring what your depressive symptoms are, how and when they started, what worsens/improves them and explore any cycles you have recognized with them. We will then implement the best approaches to begin reducing and eliminating these symptoms. Often we will work to accept the things we cannot change and change the things we can. As discussed under "Overcome Anxiety" we may implement CBT to help you to challenge your negative thoughts and change your behaviors (including setting/achieving realistic goals or even changing components of your life you are not happy with), to help you to feel less depressed. EMDR can also be utilized for depression by disentangling those negative core beliefs that cause us to feel depressed.
Discover self-acceptance
Each one of us are impacted by our life experiences - and all of those experiences impact how we feel about ourselves! Self-Acceptance is ever-changing for various reasons, such as:
- ongoing transitions in life
- adaption to new roles
- negative experiences that haunt us
- unhealthy relationships
- among many other reasons
Together, we can explore what keeps you from truly accepting yourself and help you to reconcile with and accept the different parts of yourself.
End substance abuse
I am a Certified Alcohol and Drug Counselor and I can help you to break the cycle of addiction, if you are willing and ready. If you are not willing and ready, we can either explore what holds you back or I will respect your wishes if you do not want to work on this. If you know you want to make changes, we may use motivational interviewing strategies to move you towards your goals, find other coping skills to use in place of your substance use, work on relapse prevention, as well as address the many other components. Most individuals who battle with addiction, have other underlying conditions to be treated, such as depression, anxiety and unprocessed trauma-to name a few, as this is a multi-faceted disease. If you are already in recovery, I can support you with your journey too.
Improve interpersonal relationships
As if life is not complicated enough for one human, when we add another being into the mix, it can surely be difficult at times. I can help you examine the healthiness of your relationship(s), help you to establish and create boundaries with others, teach you different communication strategies to utilize, and help you to recognize your own unhealthy roles in relationships. Healthy interpersonal relationships are a huge component of most individual's overall happiness.
Evidence-Based Therapy approaches utilized
More than anything, I would identify as using an eclectic therapy approach- often combining multiple approaches.
My most utilized approach, often intertwined with other approaches, is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). With CBT, we are looking at how our thoughts impact our feelings, how our feelings impact our behaviors, and how our behaviors impact our thoughts. We will find ways to challenge negative thinking and identify positive behavioral changes we realistically can make, to help our overall mood. We will explore ways to break the negative cycles together.
Listed below are additional modalities I often incorporate:
Attachment-Based Therapy
Choice Centered
Client Centered Therapy
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy (EMDR)
Internal Family Systems
Grief Therapy
Humanistic Therapy
Interpersonal Therapy
Mindfulness
Motivational Interviewing
Person-Centered Therapy
Positive Psychotherapy
Solution-Focused Therapy
Strength-Based Therapy
Supportive Psychotherapy
What to expect
Your initial visit will be an assessment, where we will discuss your goals and what you hope to gain from therapy. In this initial assessment, I will also obtain other information about you to help me understand what makes you, you. This will include:
- your mental health history
- your social history
- your medical history
- your substance use history
- and any other information, you feel is pertinent for me to know about you.
From there, we will establish your goals and discuss the different treatment options and modalities that may be effective for you. We will also discuss recommended frequency of appointments. I completely understand and respect that your life may be busy (most likely is) and we will schedule appointments at a frequency, that works best for you. All sessions will be about 45 minutes.
For return visits, I like to start sessions with "one good thing" and "one difficult thing" that occurred between sessions. The purpose of this is to always identify and find the positives that have happened, as well as to discuss, process or problem-solve anything difficult that occurred between sessions.
We will then focus on our agreed agenda, as discussed/planned in the previous session- aligning with your treatment goals. (Please note, you will have complete control over how your sessions are structured, as sessions are for you. If you are having a week that you have something specific you need to focus on, we can always push back our original agenda. Or, if you are having a week you want to skip a "good and difficult thing," to address something else- that is okay too.)
My goal is to help you achieve your goals and to walk away with the confidence, self-acceptance and tools you need, to take better control of your mental health and to feel good about you.
