Anxiety
Unmanaged anxiety can make us feel out of control. It can make us irritable within our relationships. Anxiety can keep us from having new experiences that deepen our enjoyment of life, deepen our ability to connect with others and help us learn new skills.
I help to transform your relationship with anxiety so that it is no longer an anchor weighing you down, but an ally in helping you identify and resolve the problems you are facing. By learning to manage the physiological response to anxiety, you will be better able to understand the valuable message of your anxiety. By applying appropriate compassion and problem solving, your anxiety transforms into a tool of understanding, self growth and resilience.
Anger Management
Anger is a potent emotion. It can give us the energy to create necessary change. It can also cause us to be destructive, to ourselves and others. Just as anger reveals to us where we identify injustice, it also reveals to us where we feel vulnerable, helpless and disempowered.
I help you to understand the messages of your anger and address those areas where it is identifying your wounding and need for self protection. Once we hear the valuable message of anger, and learn to manage the physiological response it gives us, we are better able to funnel our anger towards healthy life changes and away from its destructive capacity.
Behavioral Addictions and Substance Use
In the words of Florence Welch of Florence and the Machine, "We all have a hunger." Though this hunger is often for love, companionship, understanding, and a sense of self-worth, all too often food, shopping, superficial sexual behavior, substances, and the Internet are far more easily accessible.
My approach to treating compulsions and/or addictions is two-pronged. We will work on self-regulation skills to manage the urges to engage in unhealthy coping while simultaneously removing the roadblocks to experiencing a deep connection with others and acceptance of the self.
Navigating Challenging and Abusive
Relationships
The ability to love and be loved is one of the most enriching experiences in life. So often in our drive to feel connected and loved, we mistakenly accept control, enmeshment and/or codependence. In adapting to unhealthy boundaries within relationships, our grip on our sense of self becomes weaker. We start to blame and reproach ourselves for being involved in an unhealthy relationship, as if we should have known the lessons before we had the opportunity to learn them.
I can support you in re-establishing a sense of self within your relationship(s). You will gain greater insight into the boundaries between your needs and the needs of the other. In situations in which a relationship has become physically dangerous to you, I can help you, in your time, establish a safety plan, make the thoughtful decisions that the situation requires and seek external resources for support. I will not rush you to be where you are not. You will be the decision-maker and leader of your own process
Trauma and Neglect History
Trauma and neglect has a profound impact on our lives, shaping beliefs and behaviors in ways we may not even be aware of. It's important to recognize that these experiences were not our fault, and to transform self-blame into self-compassion.
We can then focus on understanding how our past has influenced us, and work to change any negative beliefs or behaviors that may have developed as a result. By learning from our past in this way, we can move forward with greater self-awareness and a deeper understanding of ourselves and others.
Challenges with Intimacy and Isolation
The lessons we were taught in early life about connection to others follow us into adulthood. Learning to protect yourself from over-stressed, emotionally immature or simply unskilled caregivers worked for you when you were a child. The problem is that those lessons now keep you emotionally isolated and from experiencing satisfaction in your relationships.
Together, we will excavate the beliefs about yourself, others and relationships that are operating outside of your awareness. We will examine these beliefs to determine if they still have a place in your life and, through experimentation and new experience, reshape those that do not fit.
Involvement in the Criminal Justice System
Few experiences in life can be as challenging and scary as involvement in the criminal justice system. Maintaining a job and relationships while feeling at the mercy of a system that has the power to significantly disrupt your life takes an often Herculean effort. It is a time in which you need the extra support of somebody who is familiar with the workings of the system and the emotional impacts of the (often prolonged) adjudication process.
I have spent twelve years working with clients in both pretrial and post-conviction phases of involvement in the system (county, state and federal systems). Whether you are simply looking for support coping with the anxiety, uncertainty and weight of decision-making or wanting to work on the behaviors that led to your involvement in the criminal justice system, I can expertly support your process.
Couple's Therapy
I use primarily an EFT approach to couple's therapy, an attachment-based therapy based on the idea that a couple can solve any problem together once their confidence in their bond is restored.
Whereas other couple's therapies may assert that a couple "just needs to move forward and not look in the past" or focus on problem-solving like date nights and communication skills, EFT seeks to deal with the wounds of the past where attachment was damaged and heal those wounds so that the bond is restored. EFT asserts that a central question between couples who are in distress is "Are you there for me?" and it is doubt about the answer to this question that produces conflict.
