Our approach

Our office focuses on:

Providing a safe therapeutic environment.

  • Trauma makes you feel unsafe. In order to treat trauma, the therapeutic environment must be a safe one. The client should feel safe with the therapist. The room itself should be calm and relaxing and free of triggers.

An understanding that behaviors developed to cope served an important purpose.

  • Some people develop coping mechanisms that are overall detrimental to their well-being. A trauma-informed professional will help you to recognize that there’s nothing to be ashamed of for surviving. Your coping mechanisms have kept you alive and safe so far, and that is nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, we can be grateful and honor those survival skills.

Recovering from trauma is the main goal of this type of treatment.

  • Trauma-Informed care not only looks at the surface-level behaviors but aims to heal the underlying issue that causes them: the original trauma.

Teaching new coping skills.

  • Healing trauma often includes learning about trauma and the impact of trauma. After that, a trauma-informed therapist will work with you to develop new coping skills and new ways of relating to and soothing your nervous system’s response to being activated.

Collaboration

  • Your therapist works with you to provide your care. They will ask you what your goals are for treatment, and then work with you to form a plan to achieve them. You are an active participant in this type of therapy.

 

Looking for something specific? Search this page below.

Trauma-Informed Therapy

Most of us will go through life with some form of trauma or another. Trauma is extremely common, and because of that, it’s extremely crucial to take trauma into account when receiving therapy.  All of our therapists are trauma-informed and use a trauma lens to help clients understand themselves, others, and the world better. 

Trauma-informed therapy is when a therapist recognizes the complicated and complex ways that trauma influences all parts of someone’s life, body, and brain, and makes treatment decisions based on that framework. Trauma-informed therapists realize that most people have lived through some type of trauma because trauma is so common and understands treatment through that lens. 

Trauma triggers thoughts, desires, behaviors, emotions that are impossible to understand without a full grasp of how trauma plays a role. Trauma-informed therapists do understand the large role trauma plays in the daily lives of their clients. Going to therapy after suffering and surviving trauma requires trauma-informed care to get the best available treatment because trauma often has widespread effects that are more pervasive than many people understand. 

Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavior Therapy

 

Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) addresses the specific emotional and mental health needs of children, adolescents, adult survivors, and families who are struggling to overcome the effects of early trauma. TF-CBT is especially sensitive to the unique problems of youth with post-traumatic stress and mood disorders resulting from abuse, violence, or grief. Because the client is usually a child, TF-CBT often brings non-offending parents or other caregivers into treatment and incorporates principles of family therapy.

With TF-CBT you will be able to better process emotions and thoughts relating to a traumatic experience. This can provide those in therapy with the necessary tools to alleviate the overwhelming thoughts causing stress, anxiety, and depression.   

Core components of TF-CBT include:

  • Psychoeducation on Trauma 

  • Relaxation Skills

  • Emotional regulation

  • Cognitive processing of the trauma

  • Trauma narrative

  • In vivo mastery of trauma reminders

  • Building safety 

  • Conjoint child-parent sessions

Motivational Interviewing

Motivational interviewing is a counseling method that helps people resolve ambivalent feelings and insecurities to find the internal motivation they need to change their behavior. It is a practical, empathetic, and short-term process that takes into consideration how difficult it is to make life changes.

This intervention helps people become motivated to change the behaviors that are preventing them from making healthier choices. It can also prepare individuals for further, more specific types of therapies such as CBT, DBT, and trauma processing. Research has shown that this intervention works well with individuals who start off unmotivated or unprepared for change. Someone may not be fully ready to commit to change, but motivational interviewing can help them move through the emotional stages of change necessary to find their motivation.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

 

Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is a form of psychological treatment that has been demonstrated to be effective for a range of problems including depression, anxiety disorders, alcohol, and drug use problems, relationship problems, eating disorders, and severe mental illness. Numerous research studies suggest that CBT leads to significant improvement in functioning and quality of life.

CBT treatment usually involves efforts to change thinking patterns. These strategies might include:

  • Learning to recognize one’s distortions in thinking that are creating problems, and then reevaluate them in light of reality.

  • Gaining a better understanding of the behavior and motivation of others.

  • Using problem-solving skills to cope with difficult situations.

  • Learning to develop a greater sense of confidence in one’s own abilities.

Learn more about our approach

 

  • 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 trauma, anxiety, depression or behavioral problems are held in the brain. This allows the brain to process from the inside out and from the bottom up.

    Brainspotting locates points in the client’s visual field that help to access unprocessed trauma in the subcortical brain. Brainspotting (BSP) was discovered in 2003 by David Grand, Ph.D. Dr. Grand discovered that “Where you look affects how you feel.” It is the brain activity, especially in the subcortical brain that organizes itself around that eye position.

    Who does Brainspotting work with?

    Brainspotting is effective for a wide variety of emotional and somatic conditions. Brainspotting is particularly effective with trauma-based situations, helping to identify and heal underlying trauma that contributes to anxiety, depression and other behavioral conditions. It can also be used with performance and creativity enhancement. Brainspotting gives the therapist access to both brain and body processes. Its goal is to bypass the conscious, neocortical thinking to access the deeper, subcortical emotional and body-based parts of the brain.

  • Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) is an evidence-based psychotherapy that began with efforts to treat Borderline Personality Disorder. There is evidence that DBT can be useful in treating mood disorder, suicidal ideation, and change in behavioral patterns such as self-harm, and substance abuse.

    DBT evolved into a process in which the therapist and client work with acceptance and change-oriented strategies. This approach was developed to help people increase their emotional and cognitive regulation by learning about the triggers that lead to reactive states and helping to assess which coping skills to apply in the sequence of events, thoughts, feelings, and behaviors to help avoid undesired reactions.

    DBT is used to treat people with depression, drug and alcohol problems, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBI), binge-eating disorder, and mood disorders.[ Research indicates DBT might help patients with symptoms and behaviors associated with mood disorders, including self-injury. Recent work also suggests its effectiveness with sexual abuse survivors and chemical dependency.

    Our counselors are certified in Dialectical behavior therapy.

  • What is EMDR Therapy?

    Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy is an extensively researched, effective psychotherapy method proven to help people recover from trauma and other distressing life experiences, including PTSD, anxiety, depression, and panic disorders.

    How is EMDR therapy different from other therapies?

    EMDR therapy does not require talking in detail about the distressing issue or completing homework between sessions. EMDR therapy, rather than focusing on changing the emotions, thoughts, or behaviors resulting from the distressing issue, allows the brain to resume its natural healing process.

    EMDR therapy is designed to resolve unprocessed traumatic memories in the brain. For many clients, EMDR therapy can be completed in fewer sessions than other psychotherapies.

    How does EMDR therapy affect the brain?

    Our brains have a natural way to recover from traumatic memories and events. This process involves communication between the amygdala (the alarm signal for stressful events), the hippocampus (which assists with learning, including memories about safety and danger), and the prefrontal cortex (which analyzes and controls behavior and emotion). While many times traumatic experiences can be managed and resolved spontaneously, they may not be processed without help.

    Stress responses are part of our natural fight, flight, or freeze instincts. When distress from a disturbing event remains, the upsetting images, thoughts, and emotions may create feelings of overwhelm, of being back in that moment, or of being “frozen in time.” EMDR therapy helps the brain process these memories, and allows normal healing to resume. The experience is still remembered, but the fight, flight, or freeze response from the original event is resolved.”

    Who can benefit from EMDR therapy?

    EMDR therapy helps children and adults of all ages. EMDR therapy can be used to address a wide range of challenges:

    • Anxiety, panic attacks, and phobias

    • Chronic Illness and medical issues

    • Depression and bipolar disorders

    • Dissociative disorders

    • Eating disorders

    • Grief and loss

    • Pain

    • Performance anxiety

    • Personality disorders

    • PTSD and other trauma and stress-related issues

    • Sexual assault

    • Sleep disturbance

    • Substance abuse and addiction

    • Violence and abuse

  • What is Somatic Experiencing®?

    The Somatic Experiencing® method is a body-oriented approach to the healing of trauma and other stress disorders. It is the life’s work of Dr. Peter A. Levine, resulting from his multidisciplinary study of stress physiology, psychology, ethology, biology, neuroscience, indigenous healing practices, and medical biophysics, together with over 45 years of successful clinical application. The SE™ approach releases traumatic shock, which is key to transforming PTSD and the wounds of emotional and early developmental attachment trauma.

    SE offers a framework to assess where a person is “stuck” in the fight, flight or freeze responses and provides clinical tools to resolve these fixated physiological states. Trauma may begin as acute stress from a perceived life-threat or as the end product of cumulative stress. Both types of stress can seriously impair a person’s ability to function with resilience and ease. Trauma may result from a wide variety of stressors such as accidents, invasive medical procedures, sexual or physical assault, emotional abuse, neglect, war, natural disasters, loss, birth trauma, or the corrosive stressors of ongoing fear and conflict.

    The Somatic Experiencing® approach facilitates the completion of self-protective motor responses and the release of thwarted survival energy bound in the body, thus addressing the root cause of trauma symptoms. This is approached by gently guiding clients to develop increasing tolerance for difficult bodily sensations and suppressed emotions.

  • The purpose of the Safe and Sound Protocol (SSP) is to initiate and accelerate a physiological and emotional state conducive to successful treatment, and eventually to successful interaction with others. It is not meant to be used in isolation but is a great tool that support therapy. It is intended to prepare the client’s nervous system for other therapies to make lasting improvement in sensory processing, auditory sensitivity, social communication, and state regulation.

    The features/symptoms we have seen the SSP address best:

    • Social engagement difficulties

    • Auditory hypersensitivities

    • Anxiety

    • Trauma

    • PTSD

    • Depressed mood

    • Mood dysregulation

    • Autism Spectrum Disorders, ADD, and ADHD

    • Misophonia

    • Motion sickness

    • Selective mutism

    • Auditory Processing Disorder

    • Sensory Processing Disorder

    • Emotional regulation difficulties

    Treatment is for both children and adults. Our office is certified in providing this treatment and we would gladly answer any questions you might have.