Detail 3
Adult Children of Narcissistic and Alcoholic Parents:
Therapeutic Approach: In therapy, individuals with a history of narcissistic and alcoholic parenting explore the impact of their upbringing on their self-perception, relationships, and coping mechanisms. The focus is on understanding patterns of interaction and developing healthier responses to foster personal growth and autonomy.
Sexual Abuse Trauma:
Therapeutic Approach: Therapy provides a confidential space for survivors to explore the impact of sexual abuse trauma on various aspects of their lives. Therapists use trauma-focused modalities to help individuals process and heal from the emotional and psychological effects of the trauma.
Social Anxiety:
Therapeutic Approach: Therapy addresses social anxiety by exploring underlying beliefs and fears related to social interactions. Exposure therapy and cognitive-behavioral techniques may be utilized to gradually desensitize individuals to social situations, fostering increased confidence and comfort.
Detail 2
Parenting:
Therapeutic Approach: Parenting challenges are explored by examining family dynamics, communication patterns, and parenting styles. Therapy offers guidance on effective parenting strategies, fostering a secure attachment with children, and addressing any unresolved issues from one's own upbringing.
Accountability:
Therapeutic Approach: Working through issues of accountability involves exploring one's actions, taking responsibility, and fostering self-awareness. Therapists guide clients in understanding the consequences of their behavior, promoting personal responsibility, and developing healthier patterns of accountability.
Perfectionism:
Many people hold themselves to rigorous standards. Sometimes these standards take over someone’s life, keeping them from experiencing joy. Perfectionism is actually a self esteem issue, and is also an addiction. The deep dislike for one’s self creates the dilemma of needing to control beauty, performance, and behavior. Perfection is often rooted in trauma (ie, never being able to please a caregiver, always being wrong) and keeps people from having meaningful relationships and being free. Perfectionism can also be a product of late stage capitalism and our current society. Working through perfectionism and takes awareness, self-love, working through cognitive beliefs, and repairing trauma from childhood.
Love, Sex, and Relationship Issues:
Therapeutic Approach: Therapists work with individuals to explore relationship patterns, attachment styles, and communication dynamics. By addressing underlying issues, individuals can develop healthier relationship skills, navigate challenges, and build fulfilling connections.
Self-Esteem:
Therapeutic Approach: Therapy for self-esteem involves identifying and challenging negative self-perceptions. Therapists work collaboratively with clients to build self-awareness, self-compassion, and develop coping mechanisms to counteract self-doubt.
End Of Life:
One of the most vulnerable times in life is the end of life, especially when the end comes too soon. When one has been diagnoses with a late stage or terminal illness such as cancer, they are now facing a ticking clock to achieve what they must achieve before leaving this earth. The possibility of hope and the messages of not giving up are parallel to having to face the mementos task of grieving the end of your own life, watching your body shut down, coping with the pain and the lethargy of being ill, and saying goodbye to everyone you know. I have supported this process before and I feel honored to have done so.
Work Relationships:
What people usually find in therapy, whether they intended to or not, is that therapy can help improve work relationships as well. Talking through conflicts at work and thinking about potential ways to communicate and manage conflict with coworkers, bosses, and direct reports can help one feel more prepared and communicate better. Often times we project stories onto our managers and coworkers without realizing it. Handling our projections can improve our daily work situations and relationships. Exploring your managing style with a therapist and looking into your own emotional blocks that affect your work life can improve your work.
Complex PTSD:
Complex PTSD- What many people don’t realize is that post-traumatic stress disorder is not limited to one singular traumatic event. Complex PTSD refers to post traumatic stress disorder that had resulted from many events, usually starting at a young age. People who grew up in high stress and/or abusive family systems often suffer from complex trauma as adults. This abuse can be physical or emotional abuse, and situations like an early death of a parent or being the child of a tumultuous divorce can often create complex complex trauma, as can having a parent or a sibling with a personality disorder.
The telltale signs of complex trauma show up in several ways. When relational or catastrophic things are happening over and over again in your life as an adult, this can sometimes be how complex PTSD that hasn’t been processed is being re-enacted now. People suffering from PTSD don’t have a break in their current reality from reliving their past. When we face trauma at a young age our belief system is formed thinking that life is a series of unfortunate events. This belief system (and the consequent focus on/ reinforcement of hard things in the current moment) keeps people from having a lighter, safer reality of life and relationships. People with complex PTSD have never known a different reality from their hyper-vigilance and constant fear, thus they assume this is their personality. In fact, complex PTSD is not a personality, it’s a symptom of a wound that can be treated. People with complex PTSD experience adrenaline, and find coping mechanism such as being overly busy, working all of the time, adventuring or traveling often, avoiding close relationships, not trying new things, ect. to manage and mitigate triggers. The issue with these coping mechanisms is that they can keep us from healing our relationship to ourselves and our own needs, as well as our relationships with others, which can be joyous and safe when we are healthy enough to pick a healthy community.
Detail 1
Relational Psychotherapy: Technically, all therapy is relational, as the therapist and client are in a relationship. Relational therapy refers to a type of therapy where we (the therapist and the client) use our relationship to understand your other relationships. This style of therapy focuses on attachment habits, traumas, and desires within the therapy relationship to identify those outside of the therapy relationship. Therapy is a unique space where you can talk about your attachment feelings with the therapist to better understand what is happening in the room, which helps you practice doing this with your loved ones.
Psychedelic Assisted Therapy and Integration: Embracing a holistic approach to healing, I offer support in Psychedelic Assisted Therapy and Integration. This involves navigating therapeutic experiences facilitated by psychedelics and integrating the insights gained into one's personal growth journey.
Non-Violent Communication and T Group (Circling): NVC, or non-violent communication, is a style and practice of communication which focuses on expressing feelings (“I feel irritated”) without expressing blame (“after our fight.”) Many people have been taught to communicate in a way that assigns blame instead (“you made me feel bad by doing this to me”). When people blame others, they assign a negative intention to the other person when, in reality, the other person was probably operating out of confusion or another intention. Blame cycles are very hard to get out of. In my training as a therapist, we trained in T groups, or confrontation groups, where we practiced communicating our feelings and experiences to other group members without blaming them or assuming the worst intentions from them. Communication is extremely important and can impact your relationships at work, with friends, with family and with partners. The deeper work is looking at the core beliefs that people are out to get you or that people mean harm.
Detail 2
Psychodynamic Psychotherapy: Psychodynamic Psychotherapy is rooted in psychoanalysis, or the foundations of psychotherapy starting with Freud. Modern Psychoanalytic and psychodynamic work is much more realistic and compassionate. Using talk therapy, psychodynamic psychotherapy looks at your story and your narrative to make connections, understand existing wounds, understand attachments, and unveiling the unconscious to help make it conscious. One example of using this method is being able to evaluate unconscious actions around the frame of therapy to help understand what one may be repressing. For example, if someone is in the habit of cancelling sessions last minute or showing up late, we may try to interpret what is happening on an unconscious level for this person around showing up to therapy, as they may be having anxiety or dread around the work.
Somatic Therapy and Mindfulness Training: A part of my training as a therapist has been to help people track their breath, their bodies, and their awareness in the present moment. This training is rooted in years of practicing Buddhism as well as somatic mindfulness and several yoga teacher trainings. My somatic work is also informed by Peter Levine’s trainings and work.
Pact Level 1 Training - Psychobiological Approach to Attachment: This training is focused on couples in therapy, though the knowledge learned from this training applies to everyone. Stan Tatkin teaches a psycho-biological approach to recognizing and understanding attachment. We are trained to use body language to track and help regulate attachment fear responses in individuals and couples, and to teach both to regulate their own nervous systems and help track and understand their partner’s nervous systems.