Anxiety, Depression & Trauma
Everyone thinks you have it all together; but if they had any idea how much you’re struggling, they’d be shocked!
Are things getting harder and harder to hold together? You’ve been through tough times in the past, but this time it feels even harder to balance? You feel like your mind is going a hundred miles an hour and despite all the “tools” in your toolbox, you just can’t seem to feel like your old self again?
What is happening? Is this anxiety? Is it depression? Has the Trauma of your past caught up with you? Are you going crazy…
You used to be able to run at a pace that others would be in awe at. Now you’re finding that your mind is racing so quickly that you can barely make a decision about what to have for dinner. The clarity & confidence you once had feels distant and unfamiliar. The follow through & confidence you once had has been replaced with avoidance and self doubt. Where is the unfollow, unsubscribe button?!? This new normal is not just driving you nuts, but also affecting your work & every key relationship.
I’m here to tell you, it is possible to get ‘you’ back!
You don’t need to “get rid” of your stress, you just need to learn how to manage it more effectively. To ‘turn down the anxious noise’ in your mind. I will help you get curious about the underlying reasons why these new behaviors showed up, and we’ll work together to help you develop new tools to make them soften. You want to be your whole self but you also want to be your best, most authentic self. Aligned and in-tune with yourself.
Depression can be more subtle. You feel sad all the time; with perhaps no real ‘reason’. You’d like to live a life of job, but you no longer know how to. You want your hope back, your joy back…
I will help you get there.
Together we’ll work on:
Identifying
Together we’ll identify the key stressors and negative stories impacting your functioning.
Improving
We’ll take a look at what tools you already have in your toolbox, add or finetune the skills you have to ensure you can respond to stressors more adaptively.
Insight
In our work together you will build new awareness and learn to challenge negative thoughts and feelings. You will learn to better understand your body, its reactions and develop and sustain new ways to effectively manage your stress in the future.
Counseling can help you:
Set healthier boundaries around your time, energy and relationships
Identify and process the source of the stress/sadness in your life
Choose effective coping skills to better manage your depression and worry
Build confidence that you can control your emotions and behaviors
Feel like your badass self again!
Trauma Work - The Unresolved Pain…
I’m here to tell you that trauma doesn’t have to be a life threatening experience in order for it to be traumatic and distressing to your brain and body.
You’ve told yourself that what you experienced was “no big deal”. “Other people have it worse”. Or maybe you even believe you’re being dramatic in your response to what happened. You may feel that it's a waste of time to “hash it out” with yet another person.
In fact, your closest family members may not even know the extent of what you experienced because you want to protect them from the details of your painful past.
No one can know exactly what you experienced and the idea of opening up to someone else and getting “pity” in return just makes you feel shittier. And what’s worse, if you open up, you risk feeling embarrassed and guilty, so sometimes you find it’s best to keep it all to yourself.
Unfortunately, it’s gotten to a point where now, the effects of carrying around his big heavy thing are not just affecting you, but the people you love most. If there’s one thing you’re NOT going to allow to happen, it’s to have your painful past experiences affect these dear people.
Maybe you feel like the fact that you’re still wrestling with this experience makes you somehow inadequate or a failure.
Y O U ‘R E N O T!
Maybe you feel like this event shouldn’t be making you feel the way you feel because it wasn’t a life threatening experience; but the reality is, any unresolved, painful life events can be traumatic and stay unresolved in your body & mind until you decide to face it & heal it.
You have done what you needed to do to get through your difficult life experiences.
Now that you have moved through that tough place, I want you to know that you can choose how you heal.
My Approach:
The work that we’ll do together will be extremely unique to you. Where we start, how we start and how much we focus on any painful life events will be determined on your comfort level coming in and your individual goals for therapy.
Identify.
Together we’ll explore what’s brought you in, set goals for our time together and then we’ll identify any traumatic experience[s] you want to address in our time together. We’ll identify the negative stories, aka the root, that’s influencing your recent reactivity and distress.
You’re not crazy or weak…symptoms you are experiencing, tell a story. I believe that the symptoms are patterns of response that are no longer helpful in your current life situation. Most psychological discomfort (often referred to as trauma) exists for a valid reason and can be relieved once treated at the root of the problem. I utilize EMDR for the treatment of complex trauma, mood & anxiety issues.
Coping Skills.
Together we’ll look at what coping skills you currently have. We will work to add in additional skills that can support you as we explore painful past experiences. We will finetune or tweak any existing coping skills you have to ensure you can respond to stressors more effectively in the future.
Insight.
You’ll build new understanding about the experience you’ve lived through as well as learn to challenge the negative stories impacting your functioning. You will learn to better understand your body, its reactions and develop and sustain new ways to effectively manage your reactions in the future.
Let’s begin to resolve this pain…
Read Blogs on This Topic
