My Therapy Tools:  

Individual Psychotherapy: I hold compassionate, knowledgeable, and supportive space where you will feel welcome and safe to explore and access deeply-held feelings, release blockages, experience shifts, and gain clarity. I provide warmth as well as direct and honest insight. My approach to therapy is relational and interactive, creating a comforting environment where you feel seen, heard, and develop tools to guide your progress and growth. I integrate therapeutic interventions to effectively treat trauma, stress, anxiety, depression, Grief & Loss (including bereavement, break ups, abandonment, and major life transitions), and I often utilize visualization, guided imagery, and mindfulness as resources for emotional regulation, and to facilitate creativity, new perspectives, and self-awareness.

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Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) may utilize tools such as Guided Imagery, Visualization, and Mindfulness. Concrete skills for identifying and changing thought patterns, core beliefs, habits, and attitudes which are unhelpful and/or unhealthy are incorporated, and together we structure new ways of thinking and being. This may include creating new coping mechanisms and behavioral practices through identification of maladaptive patterns, cost-benefit analysis and/or imaginal exposure.

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Somatic Experiencing (SE) helps to address dysregulation of the nervous system and supports you in moving through strong emotions stored in the body which tend to be held by distressing memories, or trauma. "Soma" means "the body as perceived from within". Somatic experiencing helps you to discharge bodily tension and allow a traumatic memory's energetic hold to be released. This can be done through a combination of mindfulness and incorporated body movements such as tapping, or deep breathing and grounding exercises. 

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Brainspotting (BSP) is a powerful therapeutic treatment method that goes beyond the mind to gain direct access to unprocessed trauma stored in the subcortical brain by locating eye movement points in the client's visual field. A "Brainspot" is the eye position which correlates with the emotional activation of a distressing/emotionally charged issue within the brain. It works by identifying, processing, and releasing core neurophysiological sources of emotional/body pain, trauma, dissociation, and a variety of other challenging symptoms. "Clients often fall into two categories. The first being those who are seeking therapy for the first time. The second are people who have been in therapy before who are seeking a therapist with new techniques. With focus and precision, one can find with eye positions (Brainspots) where the (distressing memories) are held in the brain. This allows the brain to process from the inside out and from the bottom up" (www.brainspotting.com). Brainspotting is for clients who would like (or feel the need) to go deeper within their healing.  I am formally trained in Phases 1 through 5 Brainspotting, as well we Parts Work Brainspotting.

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Eye-Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) Therapy: EMDR is a therapy intervention designed to treat traumatic stress. EMDR involves processing trauma memories while engaging in side-to-side eye movements or other forms of bilateral stimulation, such as Tapping or Music. EMDR therapy doesn’t require talking in detail about a distressing issue, but instead focuses on changing the emotions, thoughts or behaviors that result from a distressing experience (trauma). This allows your brain to resume a natural healing process. It is an evidence-based method that is best known for its role in treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but its use has expanded to include treatment of many other mental health conditions.

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Music Therapy:  Modern research confirms that music has powerful effects on the nervous system. When listening to bilateral music with headphones, listeners hear the music alternating between the left and right ear. It is created by taking standard music, and using music editing software so that music alternates between the left and right stereo channels.  Listening to bilateral music leads the brain to “dual attention stimulation (DAS)” which is felt to help the brain process difficult memories that otherwise trigger anxiety and trauma. In therapies such as EMDR or Brainspotting, a therapist might have the person listen to bilateral music while having the patient think about stressful or traumatic memories . Bilateral music helps the brain process the stress or traumatic memories so that the person can eventually think about the stressful memories without triggering severe anxiety or stress. (www.ementalhealth.ca). We may utilize music in session during the processing phase, paired with a creative art experiential intervention, or towards the end of a session to calm and regulate the nervous system. I may also provide you with Resourcing guided visualization  with meditative background music for use in-between sessions. I have more than a year of formal Music Intervention training.