- Who I Help:
- Adults of all ages
- Teens Ages 14-18
- Couples
- Remote therapy for anyone living within the state of CA
- Issues I Treat:
- Trauma Recovery and Healing
- Depression
- Anxiety
- Relationship Issues
- Addiction, Compulsive Behaviors, Co-dependency Issues
- Types of Therapy Utilized:
- EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing)
- Parts Work/Inner Child/Internal Family Systems (IFS)
- Mindfulness and Somatic Therapies
- Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy
My style is compassionate, engaging and collaborative.
Modalities Explained
IFS (Internal Family Systems) Parts Work Explained
Internal Family Systems is a therapeutic model that focuses on understanding and healing the various parts within a person's internal world. According to IFS, we all have different parts within us that carry different thoughts, emotions, and beliefs. These parts can sometimes conflict with each other and create internal struggles and difficulties in our lives.
To explain IFS to clients, you can use the analogy of a family. Just like a family is made up of different individuals with their own unique personalities and roles, our internal world is composed of different parts. Each part has its own specific qualities, desires, and intentions.
Here are the key components of the Internal Family Systems model:
1. Self: The Self is the core or essence of a person. It represents qualities like compassion, wisdom, compassion and curiosity. The Self is not affected by the challenges or conflicts of the different parts but remains steady and centered.
2. Parts: Parts are the different aspects or subpersonalities within us. They can be thought of as different characters within the internal family. Some examples of parts might include the Inner Critic, the Inner Child, the Pleaser, the Protector, or the Perfectionist. Each part has its own unique role and purpose.
3. Exiles: Exiles are wounded or vulnerable parts that hold painful emotions, memories, or traumatic experiences. These parts often carry unresolved pain from the past and are often hidden or pushed away to protect the individual from further harm.
4. Managers: Managers are parts that try to control or protect us from experiencing the pain carried by the exiles. They are proactive and often take charge in order to keep things under control. Examples of managers include the Perfectionist, the Controller, or the Rationalizer.
5. Firefighters: Firefighters are parts that emerge in response to overwhelming emotions or situations. They engage in impulsive or distracting behaviors to provide immediate relief or escape from distress. Examples of firefighters might include excessive alcohol or substance use, self-harm, or binge eating.
The goal of IFS therapy is to establish a healthy and balanced relationship between the different parts of ourselves and the core Self. The therapist helps the client develop a compassionate and curious stance towards their internal parts, fostering understanding, empathy, and healing.
Through the IFS process, clients can learn to recognize and communicate with their parts, understand their roles, and ultimately transform their relationships with these parts. By cultivating a harmonious internal system, clients can experience increased self-acceptance, self-compassion, and overall well-being.
(Excerpt from IFSEMDR.com)
EMDR Explained
EMDR therapy is an 8 stage model that works on the premise that our emotional well-being is inextricably connected to our physical (somatic) state. EMDR is a comprehensive approach to therapy that integrates elements of psychodynamic, cognitive behavioral, interpersonal, experiential, and body-centered therapies to maximize treatment effects. EMDR employs a body-based therapy technique called bilateral simulation. During Stage 4 of EMDR, bilateral simulation is used and the therapist guides the client through eye movements, or rhythmic tapping in order to access and move a memory that’s been incorrectly stored in the brain to a more functional part of the brain.
When we experience trauma, our brain may process and store memories incorrectly in a raw, unprocessed state. This incorrect storage can lead to past memories influencing our feelings and behaviors in the present. Related or unrelated stimuli in the present can lead clients to react as they did at the time of the initial trauma because the brain feels as if the past disturbing event is currently underway.
EMDR therapy helps to reprocess the memory or memories so that the painful memories associated with past trauma lose their emotional charge. Once this happens, clients can react to stimuli in the present without the past interfering.
(EMDRtraining.net)
Somatic Therapies
Somatic Therapies engage body awareness as a intervention in psychotherapy. Somatic interventions addresses the connections between the brain, the mind, and behavior. Therapists who emphasize “talk therapy” generally focus on the mind as influencing psychological health, however the somatically oriented therapist uses knowledge of the basic functions of the nervous system to greatly enhance the therapeutic process.
Some Somatic applications are:
Grounding: This concept essentially sits at the heart of all body-based psychotherapy. Introduced by Alexander Lowen, developer of bioenergetics, grounding refers to our ability to experience ourselves as embodied. Grounding involves sensing the body, feeling your feet on the earth, and calming the nervous system.
Cultivating Somatic Awareness: The somatic therapist promotes awareness of the body. We can then work with breath constrictions and tension patterns that are held just under our conscious awareness. Simply bringing awareness to physical sensations creates change.
Staying Descriptive: Whereas early somatic therapists made interpretations based upon tension or posture patterns; modern day somatic therapists become curious about the somatic experience of the client. You can try this on your own by noticing your sensations. Try using descriptive words such as hot, cold, tingly, sharp, or dull.
Deepening Awareness: Once we have become aware of sensations or a tension pattern we deepen the experience by gently amplifying the sensations. For example, we can focus our breath into the sensation, make a sound, or add movements. The key is to deepen at a pace that does not create overwhelm and honors your timing.
Resourcing: When we help clients develop resources we focus on increasing a sense of choice and safety. Identify people, times, and places that facilitate a sense of safety, calm, or peace. How do you know when you feel peaceful or relaxed? How does your body feel?
Titration: When we turn our attention to traumatic events our body-centered awareness helps us become conscious of our physical tension patterns. Titration refers to a process of experiencing small amounts of distress at a time with a goal to discharge the tension. Used in both Somatic Experiencing http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00093/full> (Peter Levine) and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy https://www.sensorimotorpsychotherapy.org/article%2520APA.html> (Pat Ogden and Kekuni Minton), titration is achieved by “pendulating” or oscillating attention between feeling the distress and feeling safe and calm.
(Excerpt from Arielle Schwartz, PhD drarielleschwartz.com)