My Approach

I believe that each individual’s needs are different so I thoughtfully integrate various therapeutic strategies from different therapeutic models including experiential forms of therapy such as Gestalt and drama therapy while drawing predominantly from the following:

Psychodynamic

Psychodynamic therapy is an insight-oriented therapy which focuses on unconscious processes as they are manifested in a person’s behavior. By exploring emotions, thoughts, early life experiences and beliefs, we can better understand our current problematic patterns and behaviors and work to alleviate them.

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing)

EMDR is an evidence based therapy that is aimed to help us reprogram old unhelpful messages that we continue to tell ourselves. Typically, trauma causes these messages to get stuck. Trauma can involve a single or series of severely traumatic experiences such as childhood abuse, serious accidents, war and conflict, and physical or sexual assault or a series of less traumatic events over a period of time such as childhood bullying, a parent who was neglectful at times or any experience where we feel powerless, a loss of control or feelings of inadequacy. Some of these events might not even be recognizable to us but these events remain as implicit memory and shape the way we view ourselves and the world around us leaving us with unwanted emotions. EMDR acknowledges that though we may logically know that the things that happened to us are not our fault, we don’t necessarily feel that way. EMDR therapy treats this mismatch so that we logically know it’s not our fault, and we can feel that it’s not our fault as well. Therefore we are healing the whole self.

ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy)

ACT is an action-oriented approach to psychotherapy that helps us learn to stop avoiding and struggling with negative emotion, and, instead, teaches us how to accept these deeper feelings as appropriate situational responses while still taking action towards what’s important to us.  With this understanding, clients begin to accept their issues and hardships and commit to making necessary changes in their behavior, regardless of what is going on in their lives, and how they feel about it.