Anxiety disorders are the most common mental health disorder in which people seek help. If you have experienced anxiety, you know it can be debilitating and unsettling. Excessive worry about events or activities can take over with great intensity. To understand anxiety is to have an awareness of how it presents in the mind and body.

When I work with clients that experience anxiety, I encourage them to explore how anxiety presents in their body; what somatic sensations come up, that signals they are experiencing anxiety? This exercise is important, as our bodies are messengers that we need to hear out. Due to the intensity of worry, our minds tell us there is a potential threat that is unmanageable. Thus, leading to fear and avoidance.

I will work with you to establish an understanding of your anxiety, how it presents, and how it affects your daily functions. Together, we will build a tool chest of techniques that will help you manage your symptoms and overcome the unsettling and debilitating effects you suffer from.

Healing from codependency can be a life long journey. Generally, codependency is due to learned behaviors stemming from childhood trauma. It can be challenging to identify self-defeating behaviors due to the nature of codependency; people pleasing, rescuing others, prioritizing others’ needs above your own, are all traits that appear to be selfless. Healing begins when you learn to identify your natural tendencies to be needed by others.

I will work with you to identify unhealthy patterns that limit growth and personal responsibility to overall well-being. Together, we’ll work to develop a focus on your assertiveness, and offering support to others without taking on responsibility.

Further, I will help you with setting, and clarifying healthy boundaries, and focusing on strengthening personal values, social networks, and building healthy lifestyle habits.

If you connect to this, it may be time to rediscover yourself.

Depressive disorders are complex conditions that affect the whole person; manifesting in mind and body function. Depression is not about being sad, but rather a condition that affects daily functioning to various levels of severity. Depressive symptoms can present in countless ways affecting a person’s ability to manage daily responsibilities like going to work or caring for loved ones. The severity of symptoms can lead to feelings of being incapable of doing things or feeling disinterested in life pleasures like connecting with friends or enjoying healthy meals.

In treating depressive symptoms, it is helpful to delineate between clinical and situational depression; both types can have overlapping symptoms however, clinical depression or “major depressive disorder” is persistent in presentation leading to a combined approach of cognitive behavioral therapy and medication. Situational depression can present as short-term and can stem from facing difficult life challenges like the loss of a loved one or a divorce.

In creating a treatment approach, understanding a client’s symptoms and subjective life experience assists in knowing the suffering felt by the person; often a darkness to their existence that feels hopeless. Taking baby steps towards activities once easily accomplished is encouraged along with addressing cognitive distortions, disconnection from others, sleep disturbance and loss of purpose. Additionally, combining exercise to help boost happiness hormones and give a sense of accomplishment can also serve as a proven intervention to depressive symptoms.

Grief presents itself in a wide range of client experiences. Not only in experiencing the loss of a loved one, but other life experiences pertaining to loss. Individuals may experience complicated emotions and behaviors. These are unique to each person’s circumstances, individual belief systems, available support networks, and learned coping mechanisms. Navigating grief is a personal experience that can only be felt and known by each individual.

In supporting clients through their grief journey, I offer a hopeful perspective, empathetic listening, and presence to their pain. In time, symptoms lessen and change their presentation within the mind and body. Thus, allowing individuals to adjust to the changes the loss has created.

Burying difficult feelings and emotions can be appealing due to the pain of loss. However, I encourage my clients to feel these emotions, while providing a safe environment to do so.

Throughout a person’s life, numerous transitions are inevitable. Although we understand change as normal and predictable, the stress transition brings can be overwhelming and unsettling.

Loss stands out as a significant hurdle in this process due to the very essence of change. Alongside growth, inevitably comes the loss of what once was.

Acceptance around change can be instrumental in managing the thoughts and feelings that associate with adapting and adjusting to new circumstances. When we accept what our reality is, rather than what we want it to be, we can begin to follow our new path, one step at a time.

I will work with you to process your feelings around transition. Together we will address fear as a primary factor leading to the adjustment challenges.

Most individuals will face traumatic events in their lifetime, whether it be a single incident or a series of distressing experiences occurring over time. The impact of trauma alters an individual’s self-perception, often resulting in a separation from their true self.

Trauma can challenge one’s core life beliefs thereby increasing perceived personal vulnerability and leading to unhealthy coping mechanisms. Mechanisms such as emotional dysregulation, hypervigilance, and somatization. Trauma experiences are unique to the individual. Accordingly, treatment includes support improving distress tolerance, identifying protective factors, utilizing grounding techniques, and mindfulness to promote a sense of control over the mind and body.

I offer a message of hope and collaboration in treating trauma while encouraging clients to give light to their experiences while moving toward healing and truth.