My approach goes beyond traditional talk therapy. It focuses on healing and practical strategies for change. See below for more details.

First Session: We’ll discuss what’s going on for you, explore your concerns, and understand your goals for therapy.

Second Session: I’ll collaborate with you to create a personalized plan to help you achieve your therapy goals.

Therapy Goals Examples:

• Manage anxiety and stress
• Build healthier relationships
• Overcome self-doubt and past trauma

Ongoing Sessions: In each session, we’ll focus on developing tools to manage emotions and build coping skills that help you feel more in control. I’ll structure our sessions to ensure we’re staying focused on your progress, but I’m also flexible and happy to follow your lead to focus on specific issues that arise.

Adjusting as You Go: Your goals may shift over time as you make progress, and that’s completely natural. This may mean adjusting the tools we use or introducing new strategies to better support your growth.

Ending Therapy: When we reach your goals, and you feel confident in your ability to manage emotions and navigate life’s challenges, we’ll reassess to make sure there’s nothing else to address.

Therapeutic Approaches:

• DBT (Dialectical Behavior Therapy): I teach you skills to handle emotions and relationships, like how to manage stress, communicate effectively, and calm yourself when things get overwhelming.
• EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing): This helps you process past trauma so it doesn’t control your present life. Even if you don’t think you have major trauma, it can still help with stressful experiences, like feeling ignored or not heard as a child.
• Ego State Work: We look at how past experiences influence your current thoughts and feelings, and work to heal them.
• Values Work: We explore your core values to help you build a life that feels fulfilling and meaningful.

How Therapy Works: Expanding Your Window of Tolerance

Everyone has a “window of tolerance”—a space where we can effectively manage our emotions and handle life’s stressors. When we experience too much stress, trauma, or emotional overwhelm, we can either feel flooded with emotions or shut down (like feeling numb or disconnected). The goal of therapy is to help you expand your window of tolerance so you can manage stress and emotional challenges with more ease.

Here are two ways we work on expanding your window:

EMDR Therapy – EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) helps process past trauma, reducing its emotional charge and intensity. By resolving these past experiences, you’ll experience fewer triggers in your daily life, which allows you to handle present stressors with greater ease. Over time, this makes your window of tolerance broader, allowing you to feel more at peace even when faced with challenges. For more information on EMDR, visit: https://www.emdria.org/about-emdr-therapy/

Learning and Practicing Coping Skills – Techniques like mindfulness, emotional regulation, and distress tolerance allow you to manage overwhelming feelings when they arise. As you practice these skills, you learn to stay grounded and centered, which helps you handle more stress without going into overwhelm or shutdown. For example, if you’re faced with a difficult conversation or a stressful work deadline, you can use grounding techniques to stay calm and in control.