Treatment Information
(a.k.a. how does therapy work and why will it help?)
What is my style?
I want to understand you as an entire person. Where you come from, where you are now, and all of your intersecting identities. I believe that we all have done the very best we can with what modeling and tools we’ve had access to. It is my passion to provide a space for folks to feel truly seen, so deeper healing work comes naturally. Often, current events and circumstances arise to be discussed and processed through verbally; I am here for that. However, the majority of my work with clients is done with understanding patterns and parts of self, with a goal of being able to work through everyday stressors more calmly, confidently, and back in tune with your own intuition.
EMDR
EMDR, or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, is recognized by the World Health Organization and other respected professional organizations as a highly effective treatment modality for mental health struggles. Empirical research has shown EMDR as effective for mental health struggles running the gamut from PTSD and complex PTSD to anxiety, depression, physical and emotional symptoms of stress, feelings of self-worth, perception of safety, freedom of choice, and more.
Working with parts
IFS (Internal Family Systems), ego state therapy, and other modalities focused on working with parts are frequently incorporated in my work with most clients. As we grow up, we develop different ‘parts’ of ourselves who are able to best serve in different scenarios. (For example, we can use different parts of ourselves when responding to a work situation versus responding to our significant other versus responding to our parent, child..etc…etc…you get the point…) These are normal and great!
However, when overwhelming and stressful life experiences (especially in childhood) occur, our brains protect ourselves from this overwhelm by fragmenting and creating ‘going on with normal life’ parts and ‘carrying the emotional burden of the hard experiences’ parts. These parts are usually quite separated and can cause neural connections in the brain to essentially feel ‘stuck’ in memories and experiences of long ago, with the terrible feelings associated, such as not feeling safe, feeling like a burden, feeling bad or wrong...etc.
It’s important to compassionately listen to the experiences of these parts now, learn to understand the ways in which they have been trying to protect you all this time, and finally catch these parts up to the present so that you and your parts can have all the choices in the world, instead of being run by reactions sticking around from past hurt and betrayal.