My Specialties

Are you feeling stuck or overwhelmed right now? There are many different reasons why a person may feel weighed down by life and not sure how to just get some positive momentum. Life can really throw us for a loop and it can feel like we are living on a heavy gravity planet, or like a ghost in chains, feeling imprisoned and suffocated. 

If you are struggling with stress, anxiety, or depression, or, as is often the case, all three, you know how hard it can be to live life on your terms. Or maybe you have a recent or long-term history of chronic illness and pain like I do. Then there are traumatic experiences that cause one to feel pulled down and often powerless. We also shouldn’t minimize the hurt and confusion caused by relationship conflict. 

Any or all of these emotional states and experiences are very painful. These are the areas I specialize in and I would be honored to help you work through them so that you can feel more empowered in your life and set a course for your future in a bold and confident manner. That’s what I’m here for and this is my passion. 

Everything I’ve described here I’ve been through myself, so I know the challenges these experiences bring and how hard it can be to get back up on your own two feet and move forward with a vision. But it can be done! 

For now, in this blog post, I just want to speak a bit more to each specialty. 

There are other posts on the blog page that go into more detail for each therapy style or approach that I use to help my clients experience freedom and effortless choice in their lives. You can click on the following links if you want to learn more about Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT), Mindfulness, EMDR, Motivational Interviewing, and Gottman Method for couples counseling. 

Stress and Anxiety:

Anxiety, which is often accompanied by stress, can feel like electricity running through your body. However, people describe anxiety in different ways as each person’s experience is unique, but one thing we can all agree on is that anxiety can be uncomfortable at best and debilitating at worst. Anxiety has to do with a focus on what may happen in the future. We may be engaged in worst-case-scenario thinking and therefore assume the worst of what’s to come or we think we can predict the future and only see that future in terms of being hurt. 

There is a difference between fear and worry. Fear has to do with a present-moment reaction to a dangerous situation. Fear is a normal part of our body’s protective mechanism called the fight or flight response (and freeze). If there is a growling dog in front of you, fear is the natural response. And that fear reaction is meant to get you to act in self-preservation.

However, this part of our brain responsible for fight or flight is not very bright and we, as humans, have very active imaginations. Even imagined danger such as being late to work or having a presentation due can bring about the fight or flight response and so we can still be flooded with stress chemicals like cortisol and adrenaline. These chemicals are accompanied by shallow breathing meant to bring in more oxygen to provide more energy to our arms and legs. Our ability to think clearly and rationally also decreases. 

When we are feeling anxiety about something in the future, that is called worry since that event has not happened yet. Stress, which can be defined as a reaction to an experience that we view as beyond our ability to cope with, often accompanies worry which is why I have paired them together. In truth, stress can be a part of any difficult or painful experience including the other areas you can read about in this post. I can help you better understand your anxiety and provide you tools you can practice so that you can manage it and find relief. Cognitive Behavior Therapy, Mindfulness, and Motivational Interviewing are all techniques I use to help people find liberation from anxiety.

Depression:

Depression can be incredibly painful. I remember a period of time in my life, in my mid-20s, when I struggled with major depression due to ongoing health issues. There were different ways I tried to describe my experience to other people. One way was that it felt like I had been shot by an alien ray gun that caused depression. It felt like there was nothing I could do about what I was feeling, it was just happening and was outside of my control. Another way I described it was that it just hurt to be. To just be awake was painful (which is one reason why depression causes people to sleep far more than they would otherwise). It also felt like the color was drained from life. Everything felt muted to me and every effort to go about my day felt like I was in quicksand and my arms and legs were jelly. 

Depression is the opposite of vitality. Vitality has to do with having energy and a sense of purpose. Depression robs you of that energy and purpose. You just feel stuck, inert, in many ways. And what’s worse, for those of you who have experienced depression, you may have heard someone in your life tell you to snap out of it or just be more positive or some other statement that, though for their part they think they are helping, in reality only makes you feel worse. 

I can help you reduce your symptoms of depression and get to a point where you start to gain vitality, energy to live life, to even smile and laugh again. Cognitive Behavior Therapy is one approach I use to help individuals like yourself improve your relationship to your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. EMDR, a trauma approach, is another. 

Chronic Illness and Pain:

Chronic illness and pain can be quite literally debilitating. I was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease when I was 17. Crohn’s Disease is an autoimmune disorder and as such there is no cure, only treatments to help reduce symptoms or decrease periods between flare ups. 

My health issues have been a constant companion in my life for as long as I can remember. The hardest part of having a chronic illness is getting used to the new normal. There is grief involved here as you have lost the version of yourself you were before. This is completely natural. Or maybe you are at a point where you are still struggling with the idea that your health issues are going to be a part of your life going forward and you are not yet ready to accept this. That’s also natural. It’s not easy.

However, at some point, if we want our emotional, mental, and physical well-being to improve, we do have to work on acceptance. Here’s why: there is a part of the nervous system called the gate control mechanism. To put it simply, this mechanism, located in the spinal cord, is responsible for the amount of pain information that goes to the brain and back out to the rest of the body. This mechanism is like a flap or a door. The more open it is, the more pain you will experience, the more closed, the less pain. Research has shown that stress causes the gate to open up wider, thus causing more pain. So, how you manage stress, which includes how you view your illness and your limitations, your thoughts, your feelings, can all literally increase or decrease your experience of pain. 

I can teach you more about how to regulate the gate control mechanism in your body as well as gently help you to come to a place of acceptance around your health (acceptance does not mean inaction, by the way). This can be done through cognitive approaches, mindfulness, and other methods. In addition, I can help you to find a way to live your life on your terms within the limitations you may have, so that you can still enjoy your life. Having a chronic illness does not also mean life has to stop.

Trauma:

There are different kinds of trauma so here is a good place to both provide a basic definition of trauma as well as the types of trauma. I like to use a very straightforward definition which is that trauma is any past painful experience that still has a negative effect on one’s life today. That’s it. It doesn’t have to be more than that. 

So, what does this mean? Say Sarah got good grades in school but neither of her parents paid much attention to how hard she worked. How would that lack of support affect Sarah? Maybe she continues to work hard in all aspects of her life so that maybe, just maybe, her parents, or someone else by proxy, can tell her how well she did. And even if she were to hear a compliment by a teacher or boss, at this point in time, she may still not fully accept herself as being deserving of it. So, due to Sarah’s earlier life experiences she becomes a perfectionist, struggles with stress and anxiety, maybe even depression, largely because on a deeper level she doesn’t believe she is good enough. 

Part of us gets stuck at the age in which we experience our trauma, so it wouldn’t be the adult version of Sarah who is always striving for perfection, but that school girl that never got the support, attention, and encouragement she so desperately needed from her parents. 

In the therapy field, we may call this “small t trauma” (or “little t”), that is, an experience that had a painful effect on an individual but was not a threat to his or her physical safety. There is also a category called “Big T trauma” which relates to experiences that are life threatening. These experiences could be of sexual or physical violence, an accident, or any other harrowing experience that puts an individual’s safety at risk. To take it even further, we don’t necessarily need to experience the event personally. For example, a parent whose child survived a school shooting, after hearing the detailed accounting of events from her child, may herself experience symptoms of trauma through what are called mirror neurons. 

As an EMDR certified therapist, I can help you work through your trauma through an intervention called EMDR. EMDR is a powerful therapeutic technique that works with the body’s nervous system (where trauma is stored) so that you can feel less emotional attachment to the traumatic event(s) and feel more empowered in your life. 

Relationship Difficulties:

Intimate relationships are important. Not only can the connection with another person feel amazing, but relationships also hold up a mirror to who we are so that we can grow and evolve as people. Maybe right now your relationship is not going so well. You and your partner are fighting a lot or barely talk to one another. You know you fell in love at some point but it has become hard to remember what that was like. 

Couples can be at various degrees of conflict or even chaos in their relationship. Some people want to fine tune, looking to just make some adjustments. Others are trying to save their relationship or marriage. I have worked with couples at all different points on the spectrum. 

I use the evidence-based Gottman Method to help couples learn how to improve their communication and better manage conflict, strengthen their friendship, and learn how to create a shared meaning system within their relationship. The Gottman Method is based on Doctors John and Julie Gottman who have researched couples for four decades and meticulously analyzed the common features present in couples that didn’t last as well as in those that did. From that information they created interventions and tools that can be taught to couples so that they can become masters of relationship. I can teach you these tools. These are skills that can be learned and, in the process, improve your relationship and greatly reduce stress in your life.

If you are struggling in one or more of these areas, I can help. You don’t need to suffer alone. I know what it feels like and I also know what it feels like to feel more empowered and live a life that I choose. It can absolutely happen for you. I have tried to make it as easy as possible for you to contact me. You can click on the contact buttons found on this page and throughout this site, click on the free 15-minute consult button to select an open slot, or you can call, text, or email me using the information provided on the Contact Me page. Just taking one step can make a huge difference. I look forward to hearing from you!