My Approach to Healing:
My approach to therapy is personalized to your needs, and we will work together to collaboratively determine the treatment that is best for you. I’m passionate about understanding life from your point of view. I’m committed to continuous education, which allows me to reflect and grow as a clinician alongside my clients.
What continues to drive me as a counselor is my heartfelt desire to help my clients. In sessions, you will receive my full attention, care, and support, while we navigate the waves of life together.
I would be honored to be a part of your journey.
I believe healing involves the integration of mind and body. My work combines evidence-based practices to address both the emotional and physical aspects of trauma, ptsd, anxiety, and depression.
- EMDR helps you process and reframe traumatic memories, reducing their emotional charge and enabling you to feel more empowered.
- Biofeedback allows you to gain awareness and control over your physiological responses, helping to manage symptoms like anxiety or chronic pain.
- Somatic Therapy helps you reconnect with your body, releasing stored tension and emotions from past traumas.
- Internal Family Systems (IFS) enables you to explore the different parts of yourself, bringing healing and integration to fragmented experiences.
- Cognitive Therapy, emphasizing the link between thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
Each session is tailored to your unique needs, creating a collaborative, safe space for healing.
My work is informed by 25 years of professional experience and as a seasoned human being. I will approach your individual needs with perspective and insight. My approach as a therapist is warm, interactive, and deeply attentive with a focus on understanding and discovering new ideas and finding solutions. Identifying and building on your strengths is a crucial part of our journey together.
Your journey is unique, and I believe the most profound and lasting progress comes from an integrative approach. We'll thoughtfully blend various modalities to best support your goals.
CBT - Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a time-sensitive, goal-oriented form of psychotherapy. Its central premise is that our thoughts (), feelings (), and actions () are interconnected and mutually influential. CBT is an evidence-based approach often integrated with other treatments for comprehensive care.
The goal is to enhance your resilience and well-being by establishing effective new patterns of thinking and responding. The therapy focuses on the present and teaches skills to modify negative emotional and behavioral cycles.
How CBT Builds Skills
CBT is a collaborative process designed to empower you with lifelong tools. This work focuses on three key steps:
Identify & Challenge: You learn to recognize and critically evaluate unhelpful automatic thoughts and beliefs that contribute to distress.
Restructure: You replace unrealistic or distorted thoughts with more balanced, adaptive perspectives based on evidence.
Apply: You develop and practice concrete behavioral strategies to cope effectively with problems, directly improving how you feel and act.
EMDR - Processing Upsetting Memories
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is an evidence-based psychotherapy technique used to reduce the emotional distress associated with traumatic or upsetting memories.
How It Works
When a traumatic event occurs, the brain may not process the memory completely, leaving it “stuck” with the original intense feelings, thoughts, and physical sensations.
The core of EMDR involves the client recalling a troubling memory while simultaneously focusing on bilateral stimulation—often a side-to-side movement like following the therapist’s hand, a light bar, or alternating sounds.
This process helps the brain’s information-processing system to:
“Unstick” the memory.
Process the event fully, integrating it into a more neutral narrative.
The result is that the memory remains, but the intense, upsetting emotions linked to it are significantly reduced or eliminated, allowing the individual to think about the event without being overwhelmed.
EMDR is part of a comprehensive treatment plan and is often used alongside other modalities
Biofeedback
While biofeedback can involve equipment to measure bodily functions, it can also be practiced as a somatic therapy without the use of devices. This involves the therapist guiding the patient to pay attention to their breathing, muscle tension, and other physiological cues, learning to consciously regulate these functions.
As your counselor, I want to further explain how we can work with biofeedback, even without equipment, to help you gain more control over your body’s responses. This approach is often referred to as “somatic biofeedback” or “body-based awareness,” and it’s a powerful tool for understanding and managing your well-being.
Somatic Therapy - Healing Through the Body
Somatic Therapy (often encompassing specific modalities like Somatic Experiencing ) is a holistic approach to mental health that emphasizes the deep connection between the mind and body. It is based on the understanding that past stress, trauma, and emotional experiences are not just stored in the memory, but also held as physical tension, sensation, and patterns in the body.
Core Concept: The Body Holds the Story
In moments of intense stress or trauma, the body’s natural fight, flight, or freeze response may be overwhelmed and incomplete. Somatic therapy works to address these “stuck” survival energies that can manifest as chronic pain, anxiety, emotional reactivity, or difficulty regulating emotions.
How Somatic Therapy Works
The process involves gently tracking and noticing somatic experiences—the subtle physical sensations, tensions, and impulses in the present moment. This includes paying attention to:
Sensations: Tingling, warmth, tightness, lightness.
Impulses: Urges to move, push, or run.
Movement: Posture, gestures, and breathing patterns.
By bringing mindful awareness to these body signals, the therapist helps the client safely:
“Titrate” (slowly process): Release the trapped energy and complete the natural physiological response that was interrupted during the original event.
Regulate the Nervous System: Gradually expand the client’s “window of tolerance,” making them less reactive and more capable of handling stress.
The ultimate goal is to restore the body’s natural capacity for self-regulation and achieve greater emotional and physical ease, leading to improved overall well-being.
Somatic approaches are highly valuable for addressing trauma, chronic stress, anxiety, and related conditions.
Internal Family Systems (IFS): Getting to Know Your Inner Community
The Internal Family Systems (IFS) model, developed by family therapist Dr. Richard Schwartz, offers a gentle and powerful way to understand your mind. Instead of seeing yourself as one single person, IFS suggests it’s normal and healthy to view your mind as an “internal community” made up of many different, valuable “parts.”
Understanding Your Parts
Every “part” has its own unique feelings, beliefs, and jobs. For instance, you might have:
Protective Parts: These try to keep you safe (e.g., the anxious part that worries, the critical part that pushes you to work harder, or the avoidant part that shuts down). They often carry heavy burdens from past painful experiences.
Wounded Parts: These hold the pain, sadness, or fear from your past.
The Self: Your Core of Calm
IFS teaches that beneath all these parts is your Self—your core nature. The Self is a source of curiosity, calm, clarity, and compassion. It is the wise, unharmed inner leader you can learn to access.
The work of IFS is not to eliminate any part, but to help the Self connect with and heal the protective and wounded parts. When your Self is in charge, your internal “community” becomes balanced and harmonious, leading to greater well-being and confidence.
One way to understand yourself is to think of your mind as a family. The people you grew up with, especially your parents or caregivers, can become internalized as different parts of yourself. These parts can also be younger versions of you, what’s often called your inner child.
When you experience something difficult or traumatic as a child, that younger part of you can hold onto that memory until you’re ready to address it.
Hypnotherapy - A Versatile Therapeutic Tool
Hypnosis is a therapeutic tool often used in conjunction with counseling. It can function as a powerful adjunct to other modalities, or as a set of specific techniques (like the Lemon Technique) to facilitate internal change and self-management. Its purpose is to support and enhance the client’s internal processing.
You Remain in Control: Unlike popular myths, you are not asleep or unconscious. You are fully aware and can choose to exit the state at any time.