Has your relationship lost its spark?
Are you struggling to communicate?
Are you having trouble concentrating or making decisions?
Is it hard to enjoy yourself with family and friends?
In individual therapy, I focus on self-awareness as a way to cope with overwhelming emotions, like sadness, anger, or stress. We will explore the importance of self-compassion and self-acceptance in your daily life, and how you can utilize these tools to improve your work, school, and social life.
Learn more about individual therapy below.
Depression
Sadness. Lack of motivation. Hopelessness. Depression prevents you from having positive relationships and feeling fulfilled in your daily life. Individual therapy provides you the opportunity to uncover the root of your depression, as well as the solutions that will release you from its hold.
As your therapist, I will assess behaviors and physical health for possible areas of improvement. We will also explore thought processes that might be contributing to your depressed mood, including but not limited to: negative self-talk, unproductive core beliefs about yourself and the world, and black-and-white thinking.
Typically, a change in thought process leads to a change in your emotional experience. I will also work with you on identifying, understanding and expressing your emotions in a way that is appropriate, soothing and healthy. Certainly, your ability to express and cope with your feelings contributes to having a satisfying life.
If necessary, we will delve into your personal and family history to gain a greater understanding of your depression and how we might overcome it. As I said, the process may take time, but you can rest assured that I will provide the support and safety you need to get through this difficult time in your life.
Anxiety
As humans, we all experience some level of anxiety when faced with uncomfortable situations. As long as we are able to move through it, anxiety does not become much of a problem. For some of us, though, anxiety can be overwhelming and even debilitating.
When anxiety develops into a disorder, it changes your ability to respond to your environment in natural and appropriate ways, and you may experience symptoms ranging from excessive worrying and racing thoughts to heart palpitations and shortness of breath. Your mind and your body perceive danger, which interferes with your ability to make decisions, have healthy relationships, function at work, and enjoy your life overall.
As your individual therapist, I will help you identify what triggers your anxiety and ways to cope with the symptoms as they arise. You will become so familiar with the specific ways your body and mind manifest anxiety that you will be able to catch it before it overwhelms you – in this way, you will regain a feeling of safety and some sense of control over your emotional and physical experience.
While you may have to exercise patience for the process, once you become familiar with the mindfulness and coping strategies that work for you, you will be equipped to manage your anxiety (as well as other distressing emotions) in a healthy way for the rest of your life.
Anger
Many people express an overwhelming anger that either explodes or eats away at them from the insides. Holding onto such anger is tiring and even anxiety-provoking, because you are never quite sure when it will surface.
Typical “anger management” teaches skills for managing anger, such as deep breathing, counting to ten, or imagining that you are a kettle about to boil over. Coping skills are extremely useful, and I support my clients’ efforts to learn and use them. What I find, however, is that these anger management techniques become more of a band-aid or quick-fix when there exists a more deeply-rooted problem. For clients who struggle with such intense anger, coping skills are difficult to access and easy to forget in the heat of the moment!
As your individual therapist, I will work with you to discover the root of your anger. When you understand the reasons behind your anger, and when you begin to realize it may even be justified, the level of anger diminishes. A sense of relief takes over, as you acknowledge that your difficult feelings finally make sense and that you can indeed gain control over them.
At this point, we begin to implement coping skills, and you learn that you can express anger in appropriate ways. You can learn to listen to your anger and feel empowered by its message, rather than disabled by its presence.