Adult Therapy

When you decide to work with me…

We’ll dig deep into your stories, your old wounds, and your current experiences to see what is and isn’t working.

What has happened to us shapes the way we respond to our world today. Sometimes, we developed coping strategies as a child that helped us survive, but they are harming our relationships today.

For example, a wife was hurting their marriage relationship by posting their struggles on Facebook. He was a public figure, and this led to the demise of their union quickly! In fairness to her, she had been abused as a little girl. The way she survived was to call grandparents, neighbors, 911, and even CPS one time to rescue her.

She had learned there are others to help, so she broadcast their struggles as a cry for help. Once they reached out for professional help, she felt calmer and knew she was getting the support needed. And he could understand she was not trying to ruin his career but was crying for help in the marriage.

Her willingness to let us dig into her past enabled her to give up this behavior that was no longer needed.

We will challenge long-held harmful thoughts and beliefs…

… that will allow you to shift into the person you were meant to be – a person who is finally in control of your life.

For example, a woman came who was struggling with guilt and beginning to self-sabotage her professional career. She explained all her life had been a struggle as she had grown up without basic needs being provided.

She worked as a child to help her mother pay bills. She tried to be the caregiver to other siblings, even when they were adults now. For decades, she toiled multiple jobs and attended professional growth seminars to learn how to improve the lives of others. Did you catch that I said, “of others?” Her focus on others kept her safe from her fears of self-examination. However, it also kept her feeling alone and sad despite her high functioning.

She was determined and successful; however, her success made her feel guilty and ashamed, but she couldn’t understand why. She just knew she wanted to “end it all now that she had arrived.”

Thankfully, she reached out. Through therapy, she learned that for 40 years she had been living under beliefs that were not based in reality or truth. She was able to learn how to “identify the message and examine it for truthfulness or evidence.”

The message she embraced as truth was “who do you think you are” when she accomplished anything. She drove by a poverty-stricken neighborhood to donate there, and the message echoed inside of her, “this is where you belong.” Her work in therapy enabled her to understand the struggle and empowered her to enjoy her newfound victory. She no longer feels guilty for loving herself as she loves others!

Our work together will help you identify and build resilience.

Your inner world will grow stronger as you gain more clarity of your strengths and gifts.

A construction worker came for counseling when he found himself drinking only on worknights. He talked of how he worked odd jobs here and there because the moment it “gets too heated with the boss, I’m gone.”

He had grown up seeing his parents have alcohol on Friday nights when they celebrated the weekend swimming and inviting family over to eat shrimp by the pool. He didn’t have a pool, but he did appreciate the fond memories of family time on Friday evenings.

He said he couldn’t shake the need to drink after work and began wondering if he was an alcoholic.

In therapy, he was willing to share about his early work-life experiences, and he shared a traumatic event that happened to him. He felt shame about sharing it since “I never thought it would happen to me.”

By working together and doing EMDR, he was able to understand that what his first employer did to him had such an impact on him that he was continually being triggered to avoid similar bosses and sought relief from the “secret” anxiety by consuming alcohol.

By addressing the trauma and recognizing he was “not crazy,” he was able to secure stable employment and address triggers to self-soothe. He continued therapy and became even more resilient and is now a child advocate for the courts to help children who have been abused.

You will become more self-aware…

… with a greater capacity to believe in yourself and handle whatever life throws your way.

When we are unaware and react to life by “going through the motions,” it is impossible to change or even feel good about ourselves. We feel like “that’s just the way it is.”

Once awareness comes, we can have compassion for ourselves and others and understand many times behaviors and choices were the results of “doing the best one could at the time.” Yet, the resulting pain or struggle is still haunting us. We end up reacting out of triggers or emotions instead of responding out of our goals and intentions.

Once we are self-aware, we are strong and able to think calmly about circumstances and choose our position based on our values and integrity. One client told me that the ability to live life in self-awareness was the first time he had ever felt he was living his life authentically. Another told me it is the first time she was able to not “feel like a victim all the time.”

And, in a short period of time, you will learn effective coping strategies…

…that will increase your self-confidence… your boldness… your determination to succeed.

Creating your own safe space, learning bio-feedback techniques to ensure emotional stresses do not harm your physical health, and setting goals that are realistic and measurable are all examples of strategies that work when we work them.

If we push a ball in the wrong direction long enough and hard enough, it will roll without aid on its own momentum. The same is true in our lives. That might sound discouraging until we reverse it!

It is also possible to push that ball in the right direction long enough and hard enough to get it turned around so that it is going where we want it to go. It becomes easier and easier to keep its momentum going in the right direction.

Setbacks can happen to all of us; however, it is the unhealthy “little things” that we repeat daily which become long-standing patterns. These harmful patterns have the most negative impact on our lives.

Many clients will say “it’s so confusing” when they begin referring to all the new ways of interacting and changing behaviors they learn; yet, in a short time, they begin seeing clearer and can hear, “I know what to do, the answer is simple, it’s just hard.”

Once they begin taking some of the hard steps, they experience the benefits and once again, their words change to “things are better, I can do things I didn’t think I could before.”