Psychotherapy Services
“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure that you seek.” - Joseph Campbell
Psychotherapy
Symptoms as Communication
Anxiety, depression, anger, sadness, trauma reactions; symptoms such as these are prevalent in today’s culture. They have so much to tell us. I view symptoms such as these as the way our minds, bodies, and our unconscious attempts to communicate with us; the choices we make, the relationships we choose, feelings and reactions that emerge that cause us to feel disregulation, shame, and doubt. What our minds avoid acknowledging, our bodies speak out. Understanding, resolution and healing can happen when we learn how to communicate with these messages. The ability and opportunity that we each have to communicate with symptoms and feelings, and ultimately, to understand them is what is needed to obtain powerful and important information, and therefore resolution. When we experience depression, anxiety, or other such symptoms, they will continue to attempt to get our attention by becoming more intense, louder, and more debilitating.
An Inner Wisdom
My approach to psychotherapy is based on my belief that each of us has in inner guiding wisdom that instinctively knows what directions and decisions are right for us. Together we can connect to this inner wisdom in order to discover your unique ability to find answers and options that resonate with you. Through a process of listening to what your symptoms, feelings, and reactions are communicating, it becomes possible to reconnect to this internal guidance system and navigate through difficulties and challenges. Every life experience we have ever had, both positive and negative, is etched into our memories, bodies, and minds, which form an internal map. These can cause us to react from past experiences before we realize that there is a past connection to a current experience. Our psyches and bodies are in business to keep us safe, and often, that misinformed system causes us to react to current experiences from past ones. Even from childhood, emotional fractures and disappointments can have major effects on how we perceive the outside world as a safe or unsafe place. I work closely with individuals to release past negative events, helping to restore a sense of balance, and breaking through emotional and psychological roadblocks. I work from a psychodynamic and attachment theory therapeutic approach that looks at how our earliest relationships affect us, and how these and other experiences may be coloring our everyday lives. My approach to resolving and reducing depression, anxiety, and trauma symptoms is unique, informative, and effective. My goal is to assist you in finding new ways to move through difficulties, rather than continuing to address these in old, ineffective ways.
A Mind and Body Approach to Resolving Trauma Symptoms
What does a mind-body connection really mean? We often view our minds as the driving force, but our bodies hold our experiences and history to the same if not a larger degree. When our minds may often resist or bury negative experiences, our bodies hold the energy of that information and communicate it to us ways that we can learn to understand, hear, and therefore resolve. Our bodies speak what often our minds will not. They let us know when we are out of balance through symptoms; headaches, body aches, digestion issues, and auto-immune issues. We can become so far out of balance that we forget what being in balance feels like. We don’t realize that many of us go throughout days barely breathing. We cannot remember the last time we felt peace, contentment, relaxation, or joy. It is my belief that before we reduce or resolve symptoms, we need to understand why they are here or they likely will continue to return.
Trauma as a Mimic
Trauma can affect individuals in a myriad of ways. It can present as anxiety, depression, social withdrawal, substance abuse, sleep issues, relationship issues, attentional issues, thought and mood disregulation, shame spirals, and much more. When a person’s system has experienced trauma, the individual views the world as an unsafe place. If someone is constantly on alert and oriented towards possible danger, the system becomes depleted. Many disorders can be explained by trauma reactions. I have worked with many individuals that come to me with past diagnoses that resolve through trauma treatment protocols.
Attachment Theory
Positive attachment is a deep and enduring emotional bond that connects infants to their primary caregiver and results in a secure attachment. When early experiences are not positive, the resulting attachment styles are anxious, avoidant, disorganized, or some combination of these. Through these early experiences, the infant’s emotional system learns how to keep the ‘self ‘ safe and how to best get their needs met. As adults, this lens remains to some degree and shapes how interpersonal relationships develop. Another way to view this is that the infant’s internal system sends out signals to the primary caregiver, and the caregiver either signals back consistently (securely attached), inconsistently (insecurely/anxiously/ambivalently attached), not at all (avoidant/disorganized). When the infant learns to communicate in this way, the internalized experience is encoded, and that infant, as they grow, learns unconsciously to communicate with others in the world in ways that feel familiar, even if unhealthy. So, we send out signals without awareness to others, who in turn are sending out their own signals. If these exchanges are healthy, then healthy relationships ensue. But often times, individuals find themselves in similar relationships repeatedly and struggle to understand why. By learning how our systems are signaling, and through corrective therapeutic interventions, we can learn how to begin to send out healthier signals that will find other healthier individuals in which to relate to.