Therapy

Clients who have lost their vitality and personal power often think too much. They live on autopilot, and as a result, they’ve lost touch with their bodies.

The therapeutic methods I use are especially useful for clients who analyze, intellectualize, and try to figure themselves out, believing that if they could just get at the root of the problem, they would feel better.

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
EMDR is the recommended treatment for resolving symptoms of trauma and PTSD. The theory behind it is simple:
- Traumatic memories are distressing because they are created by intense fear.
- These memories are difficult to process because the brain has evolved to keep them vivid to remind us of similar dangers in the future.
EMDR reprocesses these memories much in the same way that REM sleep processes and stores our daily experiences. In REM sleep the eyes move rapidly left and right, and it is theorized that this bilateral movement of the eyes helps us process daily experiences and store information in long-term memory.
Moving the eyes back and forth is one way of creating the bilateral stimulation in EMDR. Therapists may also use earphones with alternating tones or hand pulsers that gently pulse back and forth.
This technique produces rapid results. It allows the brain to fully process the traumatic memory and then store it in long-term memory, where it becomes a neutral part of the client’s past.
For more information, go to: https://www.emdr.com/what-is-emdr.
Internal Family Systems (IFS)
In this therapy I help clients learn to work with coping strategies that are no longer helpful. For example, IFS techniques can neutralize a merciless critic, tame the perfectionist, and transform the people-pleasing doormat into an assertive, self-possessed adult.
Sometimes different parts of us are in conflict with each other, which is expressed by the common phrase, “Part of me feels this way, but another part feels the opposite.”
IFS therapy teaches clients how to reduce internal conflict and achieve emotional stability.
Click here to find out more about IFS.
Somatic Processing
Many of my clients have a hard time noticing what they feel in their body. They can analyze, criticize, or ignore their body. But they don’t know how their body feels as they talk about a dying parent, or notice how their posture changes under stress.
In this academic town many people devalue any information they may get from their corporeal selves. Somatic processing gets them back in touch with their body so they can understand themselves and process their feelings more fully.
Signs You Might Need Somatic Processing
- Do you live inside your head?
- Has a lifetime of to-do lists, multi-tasking, and technology caused you to forget you have a body?
- Are you a human-thinking rather than a human-being?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, don’t despair.

I can help you get out of your head and get back in your body.

Contact me or text me at 319.930.7699 to set up an appointment.