Train your brain and body
Decades ago, I was searching to find therapies that worked for me—really worked. I was looking for something that would stick. In Imago Couples Therapy & DBT, I found just that.Once I found something that worked, I knew I had to teach this to others.
Here’s what I know: You don’t need that unconstructive self-talk any more—the negative interference that tells you that you can’t step into your full potential. Or have a thriving career. Or ever be loved. Or whatever it is that keeps your chest tight and eyes open into the early hours. Awesome……
So let’s toss out that tape. You deserve it. Here’s how:
IMAGO Therapy
What I like about Imago Couples Therapy is that it essentially takes the therapist out of the room. No more, “therapist as referee.” Therapist as the teacher of a dialogue? Yes! But not as a side-taker.
When you learn how to use the Imago dialogue, you learn how to talk to each other on your own. This dialogue helps you move through the heart of what triggers you—the heart of what is below the surface.
Understanding and empathizing with what is below the surface helps you and your partner begin to heal yourselves and your relationship by moving away from finger pointing and reactivity to insight and empathy.
LGBTQ Couples Therapy
I understand, on a personal level as well as professionally that falling in love with members of the same sex, both sexes, or any other situation that is not hetero-normative can have its own unique issues.
Members of the LGBTQ+ community (as well as any minority group) will be best served in a healing, supportive environment. Thankfully, I and Imago both can offer hope with a gender neutral, “people-based” practice.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
I’m an advocate for DBT because it too is an evidence-based practice that has been clinically proven to help the mind and body work better together.
Initially created for “difficult to treat” people with intense traumas (neglect, sexual assault, alcoholism), the method has gained acceptance for all forms of issues that impact mental health.
As a trauma therapist, I’ve seen many clients finally overcome crippling anguish that has held on despite many years (sometimes, even decades) of therapy and various methods of treatment.
DBT trains you to recognize the stress responses in your body and how to work through them. Because emotions only last 3 minutes -90 seconds —if you don’t latch on—learning how to use mindfulness skills such as breathing and positive self-talk to create new neural pathways, move you through the uncomfortable waves to a more peaceful place
The work also focuses on other acceptance-based skills in addition to mindfulness. (Distress Tolerance skills teach you how to live through the emotion without making things worse. In addition to acceptance skills, the change skills of Emotion Regulation, and Interpersonal Effectiveness are also used—all to help you walk toward improving well-being and positive, long lasting change. These changes affect your brain and your body, on a neural/cellular level.
Building a life worth living: It’s the phrase that the DBT training institute uses and it’s one that you and I will invite you to explore together using these skills and many others for yourself.
Areas of Expertise:
- Anxiety
- Couples
- Depression
- Dissociation
- Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)
- Emotion Dysregulation
- GLBTQ
- Impulsivity
- Mood Disorders
- Personality Disorders
- PTSD
- Relationship Issues
- Trauma