Life throws a lot our way. Whether you’re struggling with anxiety, navigating a chronic illness, facing a major life change, or experiencing difficulties in your relationships, therapy can provide the support and tools you need to cope and thrive. From managing stress and depression to resolving family conflict, there’s a specialty area to address your unique challenges and help you build a more fulfilling life.
Anxiety is a common emotion people experience in their daily lives in varying degrees. Anxiety is experienced through feeling worried, nervous, and apprehensive. For some people, anxiety feels manageable and short-lived, however for others, it is more persistent and interferes with their daily lives and feels difficult to manage. Anxiety can present itself in different ways for different people and can be confusing to navigate on one’s own. Therapy can help. Through exploration of one’s feelings, experiences, and thoughts therapy can assist in understanding one’s anxiety and finding strategies that work for the individual.
Chronic Illness is experienced by any individual who faces a long-term health condition (physical, mental, or emotional) for greater than one year. Living with chronic illness can greatly impact a person’s mental, emotional, and physical health daily and well as alter their day-to-day experiences. For some individuals living with chronic illness, they experience difficulty with their independence, repeated doctors and hospital visits, and increased unknown/uncertainty. Individuals living with chronic illness tend to experience feelings of frustration, anger, sadness, worry/rumination, and isolation. Therapy can help. Through talk therapy emotions can be honored, explored and supported. Through our work we can explore different coping mechanisms that can support the individual navigate their vulnerable and time of great unknown. You don’t have to navigate your experience alone.
The impact of Chronic Illness is also felt by family and friends. As a family member or caregiver for a loved one experiencing chronic illness, it can be common to also experience elevated feelings or hope, anger, disappointment, worry/rumination, isolation, and loss. You are not alone in this experience. Therapy can support and hold space to share, feel, and process your journey through your loved one’s chronic illness. I am here to help you create a safe space to explore and experiences the changes to your life and honor all the feelings you hold.
As a provider with experience working with individuals with chronic illness and their families, rest assured, you do not need to teach me about your illness, as I am here to support your journey through it.
Life is a journey with many different experiences. Each experience is unique to one’s story and can come with a multitude of feelings including happiness, excitement, sorrow, fear, and loss to name a few. These life transitions can elevate feelings and result in feeling lost, stuck, frozen, and/or confused. Change is hard and you do not need to go through it alone. Therapy can support you through processing your feelings, identifying your strengths, and assist with the discomfort of experiencing the unknown.
Relationships present themselves in many different forms: peers, familial, and romantic. As people we turn to relationships to find belonging, support, and love. We look for those to support us physically and emotionally. Relationships can provide happiness and a sense of accomplishment while at times they can also be a source of conflict, stress, and disappointment. Therapy allows one to explore and process their feelings, conflict, expectations, and boundaries.
Relationships with one’s family, known as family dynamics, can be complex. One’s family’s history, interactions, and communication style can influence how a person sees the world, their expectations of others and themselves, and create strong feelings. Through therapy, one can explore and process patterns, messages (both said and unsaid), expectations, and boundaries in order to navigate relationships to support oneself, establish coping mechanism, and establish/reinforce boundaries.
Depression impacts the way a person feels about themselves both in thought and actions. Individuals tend to experience feelings of sadness, loss of interest/pleasure in identified enjoyable activities, difficulty sleeping, amongst other symptoms. Genetics, life events, medical conditions, and sometimes simple brain chemistry can impact one’s experiences in this world and can contribute to feelings of depression. Therapy provides a safe space to challenge negative thought patterns, identify, develop and explore coping mechanism, build one’s self esteem, and identify and reinforce a stronger support system. Through our work together we aim to utilize coping mechanisms to assist with managing the feelings of depression, increase self-compassion, challenge negative thoughts, and support one’s self through coping mechanisms, self-care and identifying positive thoughts/feelings.
Individuals can experience stress when situations become challenging. Stress has led to people experiencing one of three responses: fight, flight, or freeze. These responses are natural, however, can feel overwhelming with chronic or excessive stress. Chronic and excessive stress can lead to individuals feeling overwhelmed, anxious and irritable most of the time, difficulty concentrating, low energy, physical symptoms, withdrawing from activities/hobbies, struggling with decision making, and increased negative thoughts. Therapy allows the individual to explore and identify sources of stress, understand their personal triggers, explore/establish coping mechanisms to support their feelings, identify and set health boundaries, and promote self-care.