Individual & Couple Therapy

Anxiety can impact every area of your life, including physical health, relationships, work, and sleep. People experience anxiety in different ways. For some, there is a constant feeling of being on edge, feeling easily startled, and an inability to stop worrying. For others there’s a constant state of nameless dread, problems falling or staying asleep and/or avoiding situations that provoke fear. Anxiety can effect health, causing digestive issues, unexplained aches and pains and muscle tension. Socializing can come to feel fraught and lead to isolating which can form a downward spiral as one feeds into the other. Therapy can help both with coping strategies to manage anxiety when it occurs and the development of understanding of what the anxiety is really about. Uncovering the sources takes away their power which brings new emotional freedom.

Self-care is not selfish. But many of us have been brought up to believe otherwise. Self-care is a necessary act of self-respect and emotional well-being.

Codependency refers to a pattern of automatically putting others’ needs before your own, thus enabling others to take advantage of you. In a downward cycle, this can lead to more and more giving, in an attempt to be recognized as valuable by the other, which does’t work.

Codependency also refers to enabling others to continue in their addictions because you feel like you should not make demands and so do not feel like it is okay to bring up how the addictive behavior is affecting you or set limits on what is acceptable to you.

If you are codependent, you feel guilty if you dare to put yourself first. You may think about your purpose in life as being there for others. This way of thinking can be related to certain religious beliefs that make thinking otherwise feel like a sin. But if that purpose is not balanced with as much love and concern for yourself there are usually negative  consequences, such as imbalanced relationships and emotional exhaustion.

Therapy can help you to understand how it is that you have become codependent and loosen the grip that conditioning from your past has on you. It can help you form a new relationship with yourself that will leave you feeling more energized, joyful and authentically connected to others.

Many people who struggle emotionally don’t realized that they are depressed. Instead, they may attribute their state of mind to what is happening in their lives and feel that until things on the outside change they will remain the same. But it is actually the other way around… things on the outside have a lot less chance of changing if we remain depressed. Some symptoms of depression are loss of interest in and enjoyment of activities that you used to enjoy, being tired a lot even when you have slept well, feeling helpless and hopeless about the future, insomnia or oversleeping, lack of motivation, difficulty concentrating, remembering things or making decisions, and feelings of worthlessness or self blame. Depression can also cause you to feel deep sadness much of the time, or conversely, to be easily provoked into irritability and anger. In extreme cases depression can lead to suicidal thoughts. People who are depressed frequently feel that all experience is the same, a kind of unrewarding and constant drudgery that there is no help for. Therapy helps many people overcome cognitive and emotional patterns of experiencing that are the building blocks of depression.

Adjusting to divorce is one of the most difficult experiences adults can go through, especially, but not only, if the divorce was not your choice. So much of what who you thought your were and what your life was about is no longer true. Those first nights alone in your new home can feel startlingly bleak and impossible to bear. Your sense of your future is also altered and it may be impossible to imagine that your life can be full again or that you can even make it on your own. Others may expect you to feel relief if you are the one who made the choice but the emotional reality is much more complicated than that. Feelings of anger, shame, failure and confusion are experienced by most people going through this. Therapy is a safe place to bring your emotional turmoil, self doubts, fear and loneliness. Working through this most difficult transition by sharing and giving space to all of the emotional facets of the end of your marriage can bring healing that will ready you for the next chapter in your life.

When we lose someone significant in our life a part of ourselves goes with them. This is usually not conscious because of the immediacy of the pain, and perhaps shock that can be all consuming. Sometimes there is just numbness which means that the feelings are just too much to bear right away. But intense sadness and emptiness will follow and stay, sometimes longer than we think, or others tell us they should.

The truth is that grief cannot be hurried. It has a life of it’s own. But it can be honored, and that is where therapy comes in. Going through the history and understanding the unique meanings of the lost relationship is what grief demands of us. If we give it what it demands it slowly lets go of the control it has over us and allows us to be open to new experience. We do not find a replacement for our lost ones, but our new emotional openness sets the conditions for life to take us to places we might not have imagined.

Racism, sexism, homophobia and religious discrimination can be present in every level of life, including government policies, educational and professional institutions, the work world, social groups and interpersonal relationships. It’s something that can be hard to talk about and so is frequently acted out without acknowledgment. If you are a member of a marginalized group, it is not uncommon for this to cause hurt and confusion that doesn’t get addressed. So many times it is hard to be sure what conscious and unconscious motives are at play in the way you are treated and spoken to. Therapy is a place where you can process identity-based trauma and stress as well as the effects of internalized oppression.

Therapy can provide couples with assistance in addressing unconscious dynamics of racism, classism or sexism that might be contributing to relationship impasses. Therapy can also help couples understand the nuances of how cultural differences are contributing to misunderstandings and conflict. It can be relieving to see things from this perspective, rather than one person being right and the other wrong. Understanding how identity dynamics are affecting the relationships often helps couples transcend power dynamics that have gotten out of balance.

The discovery of a spouse’s affair can be traumatic and devastating to both the discoverer and the discovered. The discoverer of the infidelity can feel like the way they have come to experience their world has been shattered. The self that the discovered thought they were and who everyone else knew them as, can also feel shattered. Because of this couples rarely process the emotions involved on their own. Instead, either there is a kind of emotional standoff where the relationship never really feels the same, or the relationship ends prematurely without a chance to understand and work through the complexity of the trauma and see things in a more nuanced way. Sometimes spouses will have an affair to unconsciously get back at their spouse who had one first.

If an affair is discovered it is important to seriously consider getting help as a couple to work through the emotional trauma where things feel so out of control. A therapist can help you and your spouse take a deep dive into what led to one spouse going outside the relationship. Once this is understood and feelings have been addressed things can look quite different. Decisions about what moving forward will look like can be made not as a response to an emergency but as something deeply thought through and considered.

If you you are lonely it might be a little comforting to know that you are actually not alone. Many sources report loneliness as a pandemic in this country, one that can have profound and serious affects on mental and physical health and how well we cope with aging. Many factors may contribute to being too isolated such as illness, relocation, divorce or loss of a loved one, retirement, aging, or cultural or linguistic difference from the mainstream you find yourself in. It is a fact that more people spend more time at home with their spouses or families rather than going out or joining groups or clubs than they used to.

That being said, some people just have difficulty forming and maintaining healthy relationships with others. If this is true for you, you may wish more than anything, to have a partner and/or groups of friends, but somehow it keeps not working out. Many times these situations involve a vicious cycle where a loss in confidence in your ability to socialize and connect effects how you are with others, leading to more rejection.

Therapy is very helpful in overcoming isolation. Support is available for exploring what is in the way of spending more quality time with people that you feel connected to. A therapist can also work with you on a deeper level to understand and transform patterns of relating that get in the way of making satisfying and lasting connections.

Sometimes life changes are a natural and expected part of your development over your life span. Examples are graduations, first jobs, marriage, becoming parents or retirement. Sometimes a change in life is something that you have been able to carefully consider for a while, such as relocation or career change. And sometimes life itself foists enormous changes upon us that we have not planned for, leaving us to feel like we have little choice but to adapt. Examples of the latter are major changes in health, job loss, loss of spouse or others we are close to, and unexpected effects of aging.

Changes in life can require you to reorganize on the inside in order to cope. There can be much uncertainty, fear and perhaps a feeling of things being out of control. You may be faced with the loss of parts of yourself that have formed your core identity such as your life’s purpose, personal values and what comes to mind when you think of “me.” You may feel anxious about having to adapt to new realities that you feel unprepared for.

Therapy can help understand and contain the emotional chaos and anxiety that can come with big life changes. Having a safe person to navigate this path with can be very important especially if everyone around you has their ideas about what you should or shouldn’t be doing. A good therapist listens on a deeper level than that and helps you to develop and integrate the internal changes that will enable you to move forward and renew your relationship with yourself.

Difficulties in relationships, whether with spouses and family members, colleagues, or close friends is the number one reason people come to therapy. There are so many challenges that arise while navigating the ins and outs of dynamics with those we are close with and/or depend on.

Therapy can help with a wide range of relationship challenges such as difficulties in communication especially when there is conflict or emotional estrangement. It can help with emotional and physical intimacy, fear of abandonment, jealousy and setting and respecting healthy boundaries. In addition therapy helps improve empathy for oneself and others leading to increased mutual understanding and closeness and connection.

If you find that you frequently feel “less than” others or have difficulty with setting boundaries, and/or frequently fear rejection, you are probably struggling with low self esteem.

Low self esteem can build on itself. For example, not standing up for yourself because you don’t feel deserving can lead others to disrespect and perhaps actually reject you in a self perpetuating downward spiral. Other signs of low self esteem include feeling not good enough, “imposter syndrome,” an intense need for validation from others and/or avoidance of challenges due to a lack of confidence.

Everyone has a unique set of attributes, some of which are experienced as strengths and some as weaknesses, and you may not have had the help you needed in life to regard yourself as just human with these strengths and weaknesses like everyone else. Therapy to address low self esteem will help you to understand how you have come to think and feel about yourself in ways that are hurtful and develop a different kind of relationship with yourself where you are okay just being you.

If you find yourself “losing your religion” you are not alone. The religious landscape of the U.S. has been changing for some time. More and more people are migrating away from traditional organized religious practice and church attendance and towards a more individualized relationship with God or a more secular life in general. Many people are comfortable with this but others can struggle with guilt or even fear about the consequences. You may be struggling with conflict between your personal values and religious teachings which can bring up confusion about your identity and what your beliefs actually are. It may become apparent that we all need to work out our own personal relationship with God, if we believe in one.

If you have a spiritual practice such as meditation, questions can arise about the relationship between your feelings and spiritual teachings. For example, Buddhism speaks of aggression as one of the poisons of the mind. But how does that work in every day life, especially in these times? Is it as simple as that?

Therapy can support you in exploring your everyday lived experience with your religious and spiritual beliefs. It can be very helpful to work this out with a caring professional who has no investment in you adhering to one particular belief system or another.

These are stressful times! Therapy can help identify the particular sources of your stress, and your patterns of engaging with them that may be making things feel worse than they have to. Some examples of this are perfectionism, compulsive people pleasing and/or difficulty with setting boundaries and/or self care. Therapy can also help with coping strategies to lesson stress in the moment as well. A safe and supportive therapy relationship lowers the overall stress in your life because you know someone is there to bring it to who will maintain a steady, thoughtful and nonjudgmental interest in your experience. In this relationship it becomes less difficult to face your sources of stress and your relationship to them.