Therapy Modalities
Humanistic (Client Centered Therapy)
This client centered view empowers the client through giving them more control over their care. The therapeutic approach views the client as the expert on their own life and insists on building therapeutic relationship that explores the present suffering and gaining new understanding of conscious thoughts and feelings. These internalized insights move the client to realize, verbalize and act on a healthy future. By having the client at the center gets them to become much more aware and involved in striving to reach their full potential through mental and emotional growth. This adaptable approach pairs well with the integration of many evidence-based techniques.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
This is a is a step-by-step method for identifying your negative thinking and replacing it with healthier thinking. It works by helping you become aware of inaccurate or negative thinking so you change your inner dialogue and view challenging situations and emotions more clearly and respond to them in a more effective way.
This model was designed to treat depression, but it has also shown itself to be effective as a treatment for a number of mental health conditions, including anxiety, substance use, marital problems, relationship issues, self-esteem and other. As a form of therapy, it can be a very helpful tool on its own or in combination with other therapies and techniques. It pairs well with motivational interviewing, reality therapy, mindfulness and solution focused brief therapy because it utilizes problem solving and experimentation.
Grief and Loss Counseling and Therapy
A little about Grief and Loss itself:
Loss can come in a variety of ways. We can lose loved ones through death, but we can also experience symbolic loss. A few examples are relationships, objects, jobs, life transitions, physical abilities, connectivity with ourselves and purpose, to name a few. The human reaction to these life changes is grief, and although grief reactions have overlap between individuals, everyone’s experience is unique. My "Services" page provides detailed symptoms of grief, but just know, symptoms are natural and are not a sign of illness, although when unresolved, the stress of grief can impact physical and mental health in the long run.
Grief counseling focuses on moving through the main tasks of mourning areas during a normal grief reaction:
These reactions are generally felt in ups and downs with the individual weaving in and out through the cycle of mourning. During counseling, attending to the acquisition of coping skills and proper self-care is crucial. Examples are recognizing and accepting help from those around you that is supportive of your grief experience (knowing it is a process), making sure to take care of your physical health needs and wellness, and last but not least seeking a professional for assistance, if necessary.
Goals of grief work (Counseling & Therapy):
Facilitate the tasks of mourning to support a better adaptation to the loss for the recently bereaved.
-
Increase the reality of the loss
-
Increase mastery of expressed and latent affect
-
Identify and conquer obstacles to adjusting to life after a loss with lasting meaning making - addressing Internal, external, and spiritual factors
-
Increased comfort while remembering the deceased with active reinvestment in life
Unfortunately, there can also be an onset of complicated mourning that manifests itself if not only a prolonging of typical symptoms, but also more severe ones such as extreme anxiety, problems functioning in day to day activities, self-destructive behaviors, unyielding denial, and even medical symptoms. In these instances it is important to address the conflicts of the separation that are keeping you stuck in one or more of the tasks of mourning.
Reality Therapy (Choice Theory)
This treatment is based on the theory that individuals have choice in how they behave when trying to satisfy their basic needs of love, belonging, freedom, survival and enjoyment in life. Reality therapy aims to get individuals to recognize the reality of their choices and begin to take back control through identifying and choosing more effective behaviors. This form of care can be very useful in individual therapy, family therapy, working with adolescents, addictions, and interpersonal relationships such as those found in the workplace and in private life.
Existential Therapy
Existential therapy operates out of the idea that life is what happens and there is no inherent meaning. Instead, meaning is derived from our values, judgements and subjective experiences rather than outside forces. Existential therapy is a modality that helps individuals to confront, embrace, adjust and be resilient for long haul. It puts the experience of fears and anxiety coming from loneliness, lack of meaning and death into context in a way that provides peace. This therapy is less focused on eliminating the discomfort, but rather embracing it mindfully, viewing it as a normal part of life and as a growth opportunity where deeper meaning can be found and incorporated into life’s challenges.
Solution Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT)
People aren’t sick, they’re stuck.
This is a therapeutic approach that is solution focused rather than problem focused, and it is done by the therapist helping the client identify and more deeply understand what is bothering them.
A key aspect of SFBT is getting the client to identify what has and has not worked when dealing with their challenges. By working through this, the therapist helps the client apply what has worked in solving their unique challenges and distresses more frequently.
The assumption in this treatment is that clients have strengths that are not being used enough and these strengths are more than adequate in helping them reach their goals. The client only needs to be more aware of them so that they can be more readily utilized.
.png){kind=small}
