I specialize in the following areas:
Trauma
Adolescents
Marriage
Women’s Issues
Anxiety
Parenting
Loss & Grieving
Life Transitions
Individual therapy (sometimes called “psychotherapy” or “counseling”) is a process through which clients work one-on-one with a trained therapist—in a safe, caring, and confidential environment—to explore their feelings, beliefs, or behaviors, work through challenging or influential memories, identify aspects of their lives that they would like to change, better understand themselves and others, set personal goals, and work toward desired change.
Group counseling provides an opportunity to improve personal skills, develop increased confidence, overcome blocks to personal effectiveness, and acquire a keener awareness and appreciation of interactions with others. Group members are encouraged to explore and express feelings, examine belief systems, reflect on and receive feedback about patterns of behavior, and work toward making healthy changes. In order for group counseling to be effective, active participation is encouraged.
Anger management is the process of learning to recognize signs that you're becoming angry, and taking action to calm down and deal with the situation in a productive way. Anger management doesn't try to keep you from feeling anger or encourage you to hold it in. Anger is a normal, healthy emotion when you know how to express it appropriately — anger management is about learning how to do this.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a form of therapy that helps people heal from distressing life experiences. It has been extensively researched and proven effective for the treatment of trauma. After the therapist and the client agree that EMDR therapy is a good fit, and begin to work together, the client will be asked to focus on a specific event. Attention will be given to a negative image, belief, and body feeling related to this event, and then to a positive belief that would indicate the issues was resolved. While the client focuses on the upsetting event, the therapist will begin sets of side-to-side eye movements, sounds, or taps. The client will be guided to notice what comes to mind after each set. They may experience shifts in insight or changes in images, feelings, or beliefs regarding the event. The client has full control to stop the therapist at any point, if needed. The sets of eye movements, sounds, or taps are repeated until the event becomes less disturbing.