Treatment Approaches

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

Our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors are all interconnected. What we think affects how we feel and act; what we do affects how we think and feel, and what we feel affects how we think and act.

CBT helps you become more aware of your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, recognizing negative or unhelpful patterns so that you can reframe them in a more positive and helpful way.

Trauma-Informed Therapy

Trauma-informed care is an approach to therapy that recognizes and addresses your experience of trauma with gentleness, safety, and compassion.

It asks, “What happened to you?” rather than “What is wrong with you?” It’s about empowering you and honoring your story, healing the effects of trauma in a supportive, collaborative way.

Creative Arts Therapy

Art therapy combines the creative process and talk therapy to help you explore your emotions through
the creation of images using various art materials and expressive techniques.

You do not have to consider yourself an artist to participate in art therapy. We will use the creative process to help you explore ideas and examine problems. There is no right or wrong way – all you need is a willingness to be curious, explore, and listen to your intuition.

Internal Family Systems (IFS) (Parts Work)

We all have many “Parts” within us that assist and protect us as we make our way through the world. These Parts may consist of thoughts, emotions, or physical sensations that may be pleasant or unpleasant (“A Part of me feels sad,” “A Part of me feels lonely,” “A Part of me feels excited”).

We also innately hold our “True Self” within us. Your True Self is the REAL you – the person you are at your core – the person you can be if nothing were to hold you back. When we are led by our True Selves, we see the world and relate to ourselves and others more clearly and authentically.

IFS Parts Work involves having a dialogue with those Parts within us that have become unpleasantly extreme and have taken over the pureness of our True Self.

Mindfulness and Meditation

Mindfulness is having an awareness of thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations in the moment, by observing and just “being.” It feels good to slow down, deepen our breathing, and focus in the moment without thoughts of the past or worry for the future.

Meditation helps untangle confusion in our minds, make sense of things and gain clarity. Depending on what is happening for you or what you need to work on, I will lead you in a specific guided meditation for that purpose.

Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT)

SFBT is a therapeutic process that encourages change by discovering solutions rather than focusing on problems.

You’ll identify how you would like to change and what it will take to make it happen. You’ll develop specific, detailed goals rooted in hope and possibility.

Additional Techniques

Guided Imagery

A form of deliberate and directed daydreaming, guided imagery is a powerful, time-honored method for understanding yourself, healing your body and mind, and maintaining your overall well-being. It has been used successfully to treat high blood pressure, speed wound healing, reduce pain, lower blood sugar, enhance immunity, and treat many other conditions. Guided Imagery reduces stress and anxiety, increases relaxation, and strengthens one’s capacity to draw on one’s own emotional resources. With soft music, I will read from a “script” that will guide you through a meditation. Guided imagery can be either passive or active; for simple relaxation or for a specific purpose like preparing for a job interview
or for forgiving a loved one.

Art Expression

Creating art offers you an opportunity to use your imagination, discover more about yourself, and then integrate your discoveries. Studies have shown that expressive exercises can lower stress hormones, decrease pain, and improve chronic health problems by helping you to experience, express, and release thoughts and feelings. The more you express yourself, the more aware you become of what’s happening inside you. This moment-to-moment awareness makes it easier for you to use your imagination, your intuition and your mind to answer questions about your health, your well-being, and the direction of your life.

Journaling

Journaling can help you access unconscious thoughts and feelings and make discoveries about yourself that you didn’t know before. When you write down ideas, thoughts, and feelings, or dreams you recall upon waking, you can gain some relief from emotions that have remained bottled up inside from emotionally charged events.

Deep Breathing

With the stress of daily life, many of us tend to breathe shallowly, which raises blood pressure and heart rate and increases anxiety. On the other hand, deep breathing improves your body’s ability to bring in oxygen and release carbon dioxide. Deep breathing calms the mind and relaxes the body. Such breathing also lowers blood pressure, slows heart rate,
and improves cardiac function.

Meditation

Meditation creates a relaxed state of moment to moment awareness which is critical to stress reduction and self-awareness. The awareness you develop in meditation helps you identify the circumstances and conditions that cause you stress, which is the first step in learning to manage your stress.

Mindfulness meditation involves being relaxed and aware of thoughts, feelings, and sensations as they arise, without focusing on a particular object.

Expressive meditation includes movement and breathing techniques. Though different from Mindfulness meditation it helps to induce the same kind of relaxed, aware state.

Mindful Eating

Mindful eating means giving your full attention to your experience of food. No TV, reading, driving, talking, or walking down the street. Mindful eating is a reward in itself because for those few minutes you’re living your life fully. It can also provide you with important information about which foods make you feel energetic and happy and which make you feel tired, anxious, depressed, or uncomfortable.

Genogram

A Genogram is a family tree that includes information on the unique history of each person in a family and how that impacts each member of a family over generations. The purpose is to look at patterns that are created over generations and allow you to visually see what patterns you would like to pass on or not. The patterns of behavior you learned growing up can profoundly impact your physical and emotional well-being. Because so much of who you are comes from what you observed or were taught as a child, creating and examining your genogram allows you to identify your vulnerabilities and draw on your strengths. Working with the genogram brings a meditative approach to the process of looking at your history.