Areas of Expertise
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I specialize in working with anxiety. Often anxiety is caused by overwhelming feelings that we push away because they are stress inducing and painful. Unchecked anxiety can become the master of our lives- ruling our sleep, consuming our thoughts, and even leading to other symptoms like depression, rumination, panic attacks, irritability, anger, and compulsive behaviors.
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Many of my clients have rarely or never experienced an internal sense of rest and calmness. They have lived with anxiety for so long that feeling a deep sense of peace sounds impossible. It feels like work to achieve a degree of "normal" that others seem to be able to find without effort. They are tired and fed up with their unwanted symptoms that seem to be fueled by so much anxiety.
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My Approach
The type of therapy I practice is called Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP). ISTDP is a form of Psychodynamic Therapy which is informed by the understanding that underlying emotional issues from the past can give insight into our current problems. It explores how past experiences, the safety or lack of safety of our attachments to others, and the learned defenses we employed in the past might be affecting how we live life today. However, psychodynamic therapy does not focus solely on the past. ISTDP is unique in that it looks at how the past informs the present and focuses on what is happening in the room between the therapist and the client. The therapeutic relationship will reveal what is happening below the surface. The client and I work collaboratively to understand how they are processing their thoughts and feelings in real time. This information is like looking underneath the hood of a car and beginning to understand the inner workings of the machine. We make sense of how the emotional and logical landscape has been designed due to their very personal and individual experiences. This search for precision and insight into "the making sense of themselves", coupled with compassion and acceptance, provides the magic of what therapy can be at its best.
