We all experience bumps in the road.  Are you feeling overwhelmed with the stresses of everyday life?  Are your worries getting in the way?  Feeling depressed or anxious?  Are your experiences from your past getting in the way?  Do you struggle with saying no or setting limits with others? Maybe you've hit a brick wall that stands in the way of reaching your personal or professional goals?  Would you like help moving forward from a loss?  These are some of the issues that I help clients with in my practice.  

What approaches do you use?

I use mostly cognitive behavioral therapy.  There is lots of research on the effectiveness of this method. It has to do with the interaction between how we think, feel and behave and how much control we actually have over this process.  We can change how we're feeling!  It just takes practice over time to experience results.  Other methods I use include: guided meditation/mindfulness, narrative therapy, family systems, reality and Gottman method concepts.  You can learn more about cognitive behavioral therapy here:  http://beckinstitute.org.

what should I expect?

Our conversations vary in the degree they're structured, depending on the problems we identify.  I might ask you questions that get you to think in a different way about things.  Or I might teach you strategies to practice on your own to see which ones work.  Other times,  I might have you focus on how your thoughts might be feeding feelings of depression or anxiety, and we work on changing this in session.   Come prepared with a notebook and pen so that you can write down key ideas you’d like to remember from our sessions or strategies that would be helpful to practice for homework (AKA the ‘action plan.’).

I recommend that we meet weekly or biweekly at first, to continue the momentum.  As you're feeling better, we can meet less often.   

did you say homework? 

Yes! You read that right! :) So let’s think about New Year’s resolutions. We can all relate to setting goals in January, and by even the end of the month, we’re not doing them like we’d hoped. That’s likely because the new behaviors hadn’t become a habit, and our plan maybe needed some revision. For anything to be come a habit—the point where the behavior is automatic and we’re not thinking about it—takes daily practice. So that’s where the Action Plan comes in.

You’ll have brief daily things to do and/or read that will help change your thinking and behavior that will help you feel better. The daily practice will help build new cognitive and behavioral habits over time, replacing ones that haven’t been so helpful.