COUNSELING SERVICES
Couples Counseling
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The longer that I’ve been in the field, the more I recognize how much being in a healthy and fulfilling relationship can make or break your quality of life. I find people often wait until things are at the breaking point to get help, but what they don’t realize is that investing in your relationships is one of the best investments you can make. There is almost nothing I am more passionate about than helping couples achieve a satisfying, joy filled and deep connection to one another, which in turn, likely improves every other part of your life. I also deeply enjoy helping individuals work through their attachment issues, and those struggling with dating, whether it’s consistently ending up in a toxic relationship despite your best efforts to avoid them struggling to find meaningful connections at all.
When I started reading Stan Takin’s book “Wired for Love”, it was the culmination of so many things I was finding to be true in my own life and in the lives of my clients. I started recommending the book to everyone and couldn’t wait to be trained in his approach called PACT. I am passionate about helping couples learn how to take better care of each other emotionally and helping them have the relationship they have always dreamed of. Also, it’s not easy to get there, but it is 100 percent possible, as our brains are completely capable of rewiring at any stage of life. Over the course of therapy, no matter what your attachment style is, the goal is to help you and your partner create a secure attachment within your relationship, one where you both feel safe and secure. Talking about your problems often isn’t enough, most couples have had the same conversations a million times with no resolve. PACT relies more on experiential and neuro biological interventions to bring about a deeper attachment, which is the thing we all want and need most to feel peace in ourselves and within our relationships.
What is PACT- A Psycho-biological Approach to Couples Therapy?
“PACT- Developed by Stan Tactin, PACT is a fusion of attachment theory, developmental neuroscience and arousal regulation. PACT has a reputation for effectively treating the most challenging couples.”
EMDR
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A number of clients over the years have mentioned in a first session that they have been talking about the same problem in therapy for years, with little resolve. Talk therapy is helpful for many different issues, but sometimes it’s not enough, especially when it comes to trauma. Sometimes there is a traumatic memory attached to that issue, and processing through that memory using EMDR can help you finally get unstuck.
People often also think of trauma with a big T, the big things we all think of when we hear the word trauma. However, little t traumas, can be just as damaging but harder to recognize. I enjoy helping my clients explore how their past experiences impact their present. Through EMDR, the goal is to ‘unhook’ from old feelings and beliefs related to your trauma that aren’t helping your life anymore. Often we get stuck in an old script so to speak, and that script needs to be updated, EMDR is a great vehicle to accomplish that.
How does it work?
“EMDR is a structured therapy that encourages the patient to focus briefly on the trauma memory while simultaneously experiencing bilateral stimulation (typically eye movements), which is associated with a reduction in the vividness and emotion associated with the trauma memories. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy is an extensively researched, effective psychotherapy method proven to help people recover from trauma and PTSD symptoms. Ongoing research supports positive clinical outcomes showing EMDR therapy as a helpful treatment for disorders such as anxiety, depression, OCD, chronic pain, addictions, and other distressing life experiences (Maxfield, 2019).”
- EMDRIA
