Addiction
Addiction takes many forms, and may manifest differently for different people, however one unifier is that by the time you’re ready to reach out, it has likely taken a toll - on you, your family, those you love, or those who once loved you. Perhaps at some time your addiction was adaptive - it helped you feel less alone in the wold, less afraid, more alive; whatever the driving force, you now find yourself stuck in a pattern that doesn’t work for you.Whether biological or behaviorally driven, addiction can be overt, but is more often secretive - hidden by shame and the fear of exposure.
Just as addiction takes many forms, so too does the way we might work to treat it. Whether biological or behaviorally driven, treatment may involve the complete removal of behavior (abstinence) or it may involve a careful reduction of the behavior (harm reduction); perhaps it involves the development of better coping skill or greater insight into the thoughts, feelings, and experiences fueling your behavior. Likely, treatment will involve some combination of all approaches over time. We’ll work together to develop a plan that works for you wherever you are on the road to a more fulfilling life.
Anxiety
Anxiety is a part of our everyday lives, and often can be a tool for progress, growth, or even peak performance. The challenge comes when we feel anxiety in overwhelming amounts and struggle to manage it. Perhaps you feel anxiety acutely in certain situations (such as speaking in public), or maybe it’s a global, daily presence in your life that is taking a toll (subtle or overt) on your mind, body, and relationships. Regardless of how anxiety manifests, we’ll get curious together about what it is, what brings it about, what to do with it, and how to work with it so that you can experience more of what you want, and less of what you fear most.
Depression
Fatigue, apathy, hopelessness, physical pain, not feeling like yourself, or even irritability and anger: depression has many faces, and many degrees. These feelings may be related to an event, such as a death or diagnosis, or are perhaps these feelings came out of the blue and are hard to pinpoint. Whatever you experience, you may be asking yourself, “How do I feel good again?” Or perhaps you’ve been down for so long, you ask, “What does ‘feeling good’ even feel like?” There are numerous ways in which we might approach your experience and uncover your vitality; with each, the goal will be to shorten, reduce, better manage, or remove altogether the symptoms that have left you disconnected from who you want to be in the world.
Health
Hidden or invisible disabilities in the form of chronic conditions such as diabetes, kidney disease, fibromyalgia, or HIV+ require a great deal of daily emotional and intellectual energy. (In addition to physical energy, cost, inconvenience - the list goes on.)
Perhaps your diagnosis is new, or perhaps it’s as old as you are. Regardless, most people with chronic health conditions struggle with a number of questions: Who do I tell, when, where, how? How do I manage the misconceptions society has or what society projects onto me as a result of my condition? How do I make sure that remains a part of my experience of life, but doesn’t consume me or my identity? Shame, pain, anger, and/or resentment can build, and it’s hard to manage these experiences all on your own.
We’ll work to identify where you are now and where you want to be in order to promote a life worth living that includes every part of you (including your experience of pain or your diagnosis).
Identity
Identity - who we are in the world - is a sacred and fluid belonging that requires attention and effort to fully embody. (And that, to put it simply, can be exhausting.) Whether we might experience ourselves primarily in one way, in one context (as a person of color and then a middle class woman) and another way in another context (a middle class woman of color) challenges as a result of identity and persistent marginalization, particularly in the context of invalidating power structures, can give rise to both resiliency and exhaustion. Some of our identities are hidden, some are visible; some carry with them the historical weight of systemic oppression, some privilege; some we own, some we admonish. All identities, however, are worth our care. Wherever you are in relation to your identities, or whatever those identities have brought forth, we’ll work together to unpack your experiences and contextualize them so that you may choose your authentic path, or stand powerfully in the path you’ve chosen.
Trauma
Trauma changes our lives. When left unaddressed, it can get stuck in our minds and in our bodies and impact everything from how we see the world to how we experience others. Part and parcel of the impact of trauma is the avoidance of symptoms we experience as a result of the trauma event: perhaps you have nightmares, or flashbacks, or intense fear of situations, smell, or sights that remind you of what you experienced. Unfortunately, sometimes that avoidance becomes so big that our life can become very small: we distrust others immensely, cannot experience happiness in the way we used to, or fear to venture out beyond the confines of our dwellings.
A few evidence-based practices might help you approach your trauma in a new way, as opposed to avoiding the symptoms you feel as a result of your experiences. These approaches are called Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) and Prolonged Exposure (PE). We’ll talk about which therapy might work best for you, however both can lead to a new way of being in the world, or what’s called post-traumatic growth.
While we can’t change what’s happened, we may be able to change how you relate to your experiences and what you choose to do with them.
Trauma work is not easy, but it is very rewarding. With time and effort, you may begin to see your vitality, safety, power, or peace once again - perhaps for the first time in a very long time.
Veterans
There are unique realities to being a Veteran, often not understood by civilians. To exist between order and chaos, to experience irreplaceable bonds or to have those bonds broken, to serve and sacrifice while perhaps suffering, or even to transition from deployment to a desk job; these are realities that few face. As a Veteran, you may have had little space in which to talk about your experiences: you may have been told not to express what you’ve seen/heard/felt - to leave your experiences behind or compartmentalize - by CO’s, by military culture, or in order to accomplish your task. No matter what, with therapy you’ll do something different, and in doing so may begin to step into a life that allows you to better meet the demands of the day, whatever they may be.