Our therapists use a variety of therapy styles depending on what you need. We are not cookie-cutter therapists and there is no one way to work together. We base our approach on your needs and your personality. Our underlying philosophy is always attachment-based, we use approaches like EFT, AEDP, EMDR, CBT, and more.
We are interested in YOU, so we want to get to know what works best for your personality and temperament. Our therapists are warm and personable, skilled at what they do but also very relatable. We enjoy what we do and that shows in our warm style and the way that we communicate. Clients tend to feel the difference.
While we are here to help you find new paths and insights, we also believe in being hands-on and results oriented. We are not afraid to trouble-shoot and dig in with you, to let you know what we think when it feels right. In other words, though you will get lots of empathy, understanding, and deep process work, we do not just sit back and nod or numbly reflect back your every word. We challenge you because we want you to be make progress, be well, and be able to live the most fulfilling life you can imagine.
We are into dreaming big, not limiting you or creating dependency. We want to get you feeling the best you can as soon as possible.
Here are some topics that might sound familiar
I’m anxious all the time and sometimes get panic attacks. It’s mostly just a vague feeling but lately I’ve gotten afraid of being around a lot of people, especially crowds.
I hear you. Anxiety is not fun. And panic attacks feel awful and scary. It can feel out of control and usually leaves people feeling helpless, alone, and even more panicky when they think about it. It’s hard to make other people understand especially if they have never experienced a panic attack or anxiety before. So you can end up feeling alone on top of feeling out of control. We have a bunch of different approaches for anxiety and panic. We use Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy and Exposure Therapy to get you comfortable with specific fears (airplanes, bridges, crowds, germs, fear of the fear, etc. etc.) and use attachment and somatic therapy to get to the bottom of why you have anxiety in the first place. Often it’s a mask for other, deeper feelings that need to be felt and released, sometimes it’s a life change that brings it on, and there are many other possible causes and triggers. Together, we will figure that out and work to start getting you back to a better, more relaxed place where you feel a lot more control over your thoughts and feelings and what triggers them. And more importantly, how to change them. We will be at your side supporting you as we tackle those scary feelings together.
I am having a really hard time relating to my husband, and he won’t come to therapy with me. I feel like I keep doing something to contribute to our issues, but I don’t know how to change my patterns, I’d like to clean up my side of the street.
That’s wonderful that you are willing to get in there and work on your own behavior patterns in your relationship. The good news is that there is a lot you can do on your own for your relationship even if you are not doing couples therapy. You might feel like you get angry or critical and want to understand what drives you to get that way when all you really want is to connect. Or you notice yourself withdrawing from your partner and don’t know how to feel more emotionally connected and close when your automatic tendency is to go in your cave when you don’t feel safe. We can help with that, it’s a matter of not only understanding your pattern, but getting clear on what drives it, and really digging into the feelings that get you stuck. We also work on re-processing previously masked feelings. We work on touching into them so that you can release limiting defensive patterns. The goal is to enjoy what you really want, which is deeper, more consistent connection with your partner and feeling more free and limitless in your life.
I feel like I have a lot of issues from childhood but I don’t remember a lot of what happened. It’s hard because I know it affects me now but I don’t know how to work on it and change.
I hear you, a lot of people have a block of memories from childhood, especially when there were more difficult events or trauma. We are skilled at addressing trauma with a capital T or a small t. We all have some amount of trauma from growing up in this world and our therapists are skilled at creating a loving, safe environment for you to explore your past in the best possible way. We use AEDP, EMDR, EFIT, somatic experiencing, all with an attachment focus and a lot of warmth. Once you feel ready to talk about and feeling into those difficult memories and feelings from the past, we accompany you to touch in, not reside there but to put your big toe in and notice that it’s not so scary when you have a companion at your side. The goal is for you to be free from those old stories from the past, to feel less alone, and more supported both inside and outside of yourself. We want you to enjoy close relationships and live a life of freedom.
I just don’t feel great most of the time. I’m always stressed and don’t go out and see friends as much anymore. I don’t know if I’m depressed or what is going on, I just know I’m not doing great.
Feeling kind of stuck in a pattern of stress, screens, and not a lot of social time is something that we understand. Since Covid or before, a lot of folks have been feeling more afraid to be social. Because many people work from home more than ever and get out less, it makes sense that they would feel less and less comfortable going out. Social isolation follows along with the stress of work life and constant screen-communication. We’re here to help by understanding together what thoughts come up when you’re feeling nervous in social situations. We use CBT and mindfulness to understand the thoughts and emotional reactions you have. We will simultaneously use attachment based approaches like AEDP and EFIT to go deeper in understanding you and how old traumas or difficult things in your life may have formed certain thought patterns and ways of storing emotion in the body. We also use Exposure therapy if needed to help come up with a step by step plan of getting out more in social situations that have typically made you uncomfortable and avoid them. We also work on helping you to carve out more time to take care of yourself and manage stress more effectively.
I know I have triggers in my relationship that come up all the time but I don’t know how to change them. I end up shouting at my partner and don’t know how to stop it.
I hear you! Everyone has triggers and they tend to come out especially in our relationships. We go from 0-60 right to anger or reactivity and don’t know how we got there. But that’s exactly where we come in. We’ll help you to S L O W down those moments when you get triggered. Together, we can access the trigger itself which is very likely not the emotion you habitually go to, like anger or frustration. It’s likely something more vulnerable that has needed to stay protected. As humans, we get used to protecting vulnerable emotions from a young age especially when we had deal with difficult situations or even more subtle invalidation or gaslighting of feelings. Intelligently, as kids, we learned to maneuver in the best way possible. Those same intelligent coping mechanisms we needed when growing up don’t work so well anymore in our relationships. Together, we will work to get clear on what your more vulnerable emotions are and start to feel safe enough to feel and process them., We also work to understand why those feelings and parts of you needed to be protected. Finally, we work on finding new ways to confront and process difficult situations in the most skillful ways possible that keep you connected and feeling safe in your relationships, not disconnected and confused.
I am feeling low self-esteem, this has been a problem it seems like all my life.
Low self-esteem can be caused by a bunch of things. Like you could feel shy and don’t know why, kind of socially anxious. Or you have self-critical thoughts swirling around in your head, making you feel down and bad. Or you’re in a cycle of lacking confidence about doing certain things and then feeling worse when you don’t do them because you were nervous about doing them in the first place. We are here to help you to get clear about any internal cycle that’s keeping you stuck and really get to the root of what repetitive thoughts are causing you to feel bad and where they came from. (Hint, they are usually based on your interpretation of things, not who you really are) So we’ll route out those difficult thoughts, fears, feelings, and resulting actions so that we’re clear about the cycle that keeps you down. Then we’ll come up with new thoughts that are true and make sense – evidence based ones – so that you can develop new beliefs about yourself. That usually results in happier and more coherent emotions. And as you can imagine, your behaviors and how you relate to the world also have great potential for improvement after the thoughts and feelings are properly addressed.
I am grieving someone I recently lost. I’m really sad and I don’t know how to deal with it.
Losing someone important to you is very very hard. The intense grief comes in waves and can feel absolutely unbearable. There are different stages of grieving and loss that we are familiar with as well as how to walk with you during this overwhelming, difficult, and often lonely time. It can become harder when your friends or family don’t totally ‘get’ how you feel, especially when some time has passed. We’re here to support you during this time. There is often a big change happening in you as well when you lose someone very important to you and we are also here to guide you along that journey of discovery and change.
