Individuals
Tools for Self Therapy“Your feelings are like messengers
Until you receive their message, they wait at your door.”
John Gray
A Self-Therapy Approach
I offer practical methods to learn greater emotional flexibility and resilience. These new habits of thinking, feeling and acting will propel you to grow and feel better. By using a less traditional style, we can move beyond the boundaries of conventional talk therapy in order to meet your individual needs. Anxiety, depression, stress and relationship issues are areas of prime focus.
Tools for self-therapy: In our first session we will explore your history and your current relationships in discover the patterns and repeating experiences. These thoughts, moods, and behaviors may have been effective in the past, but no longer produce the results you expect. You’ll see how those patterns began and the unconscious blocks that keep them in place. Together, we will identify the tools that will help you to become your own therapist. These tools incorporate Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) which will help you restructure the unhelpful automatic patterns.
Inner Relationship Focusing: When you feel caught in internal conflict, you will learn to apply aspects of Inner Relationship Focusing (IRF). IRF recognizes that we are all made up of parts – some we like and some we are not even aware of. When we can honor these parts with compassion, it’s possible to shift and transform. I will help you learn to know and interact with these parts, intellectually, physically and emotionally.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) will help you identify what you really value in your life – the things that truly matter to you in the present. You will also learn to recognize and welcome all feelings and emotions, both positive and negative, as messengers telling you about your wants and needs. This mindfulness approach will help you identify what brings fulfillment and meaning to your life.
Body-centered therapy: I am certified in yoga and meditation, and will offer body-centered methods to help you attune to your breath and body as instruments for change.
Self compassion: The culminating focus will be on self-compassion. So much of our struggles come from self-blame, guilt, and shame, compounded by the inability to offer yourself forgiveness for past mistakes. These feelings can hinder therapy, and even when improvement begins to occur, it might feel undeserved or temporary. When we embrace these feelings without judgement, we can nurture an attitude of compassion and forgiveness for mistakes of the past and instill hope for the future.
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“The work of the mature person is to carry grief in one hand
and gratitude in the other and to be stretched large by them.”
Frances Weller