Therapy Approach

My initial sessions acknowledge the difficulty of starting therapy. Most people contact a therapist because they have concerns about a part of their life that is interfering with their well being. While you can talk about the problem, you likely have questions (and fears) about what the problem actually is and how you should approach it. While you have a desire to get help, it’s likely that you also have some degree of ambivalence about going to therapy.

Acknowledging these concerns, I will spend the first two or three sessions helping you clarify your goals in seeking therapy. We will try out a couple of new skills and evaluate how helpful they are. This experience helps you deepen your understanding of your challenge or distress while introducing you to how I work. During this time, if we find that we’re a good match, we will make an agreement about the goals that we’ll work towards. If we don’t seem to be a good fit, then I can assist you in finding another therapist.

As we continue our process, the foundation of my work consists of creating an atmosphere of focused calm. My office becomes a place of retreat where you can become grounded, with a reprieve from outside pressures. When you drop onto my couch, you will feel support in managing the burdens that you carry. I will guide you in exploring yourself, paying attention to your thoughts, feelings, and body experiences as they unfold. Together, we will develop a common language for how to work with these experiences. You will feel more empowered in responding to your inner processes.

I listen in particular to 3 key areas of your life: quality of relationships, ability to experience good things, and response to stress. This exploration increases my understanding of your strengths and the role that these strengths can play in the healing process. Carefully, gently, I will then turn my attention to what feels wounded within you. I take steps, guided by your feelings of safety and control, to become familiar with the nature and extent of these wounds. I will then work with you on crafting an appropriate response so that you may more fully participate in life.

Often woven into these steps is a process of increasing your body awareness. Sometimes, this is done through simple exercises like gentle breathing. At other times, it’s a more complicated process of guiding you to understand how your emotions are being expressed in your body. With this new awareness, you can feel more confident, more present in your daily life, and able to feel more deeply. The work ends when your goals have been met, or you feel ready to move on. Give me a call or email me, and I will be happy to talk about how I could help you.

EMDR Therapy

In certain situations, the work will include EMDR, a helpful tool for moderating the impact of overwhelming experiences. EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) takes a unique approach to therapy. It bypasses the brain’s logical processes and works directly with the wounded parts that experience things as felt senses and feelings. Research has shown EMDR to be an effective way to reduce physical and emotional distress and shift negative thought patterns.

In EMDR, we collaboratively set clear goals for what we will work on. We then develop resources and a shared language so that you will feel increased safety before we do the difficult work. I then guide you through brief doses of bringing disturbing aspects to mind while simultaneously providing you with bilateral stimulus. (For some people, the bilateral stimulus is provided through eye movement, while for others, it is through tapping.) The bilateral stimulus supports you in beginning to process memories and disturbing feelings. Clients report this to feel relaxing and, at other times, mysterious because they notice changes are happening despite not doing much. I will monitor this process and can use it to address earlier experiences, current situations, and anticipated events.

Because EMDR bypasses the rational parts of the brain, it is difficult to understand how it works through an explanation. Even when doing it, clearly understanding the process can be hard. One client who had been through many EMDR sessions said, “I don’t understand what we are doing, but boy does it go deep!” Give me a call or email me, and I will be happy to talk to you about how EMDR could help you.