Anxiety and stress are universal parts of the human experience.
Mild or even moderate anxiety can be helpful, like when it incites you to plan for a big meeting or run from a burning building.
However, sometimes anxiety can reach a level where it interferes in your personal, social, or professional functioning. You may find that you are experiencing “false alarms,” or anxiety and panic in response to situations that are non-threatening, like taking a practice test that doesn’t count towards your grade.
Perhaps you feel like you automatically assume the worst or catastrophize when faced with neutral events like getting an email notification. Maybe you are hypervigilant to minor health problems and can’t shake the idea that you might have heart disease despite many negative medical tests.
The good news is that anxiety disorders are both common and highly treatable.
A large body of research clearly shows that anxiety disorders respond well to psychological treatments including Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).
Examples of Anxiety Disorders that I treat in individual therapy include Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Health Anxiety, Panic Disorder, Specific Phobias, Social Anxiety Disorder, and other forms of stress.
Trauma Treatment
Most people experience a traumatic event during their lives, such as witnessing a violent or unexpected death of a loved one, natural disasters, physical or sexual abuse, or a life-threatening illness.
Many aspects of the recent COVID-19 pandemic have been traumatic for our global community and particularly for our front-line workers. It is normal to experience acute stress in the aftermath of a traumatic event. In some cases, these stress reactions do not resolve naturally over time and may interfere with your mood and well-being. At times, this interference rises to the level of a diagnosable mental health problem called Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
I have extensive experience working with survivors of traumatic events such as a sexual assault as well as chronic or complex trauma experiences, including childhood abuse and neglect.
Seeking treatment can be terrifying. I believe that an essential part of trauma treatment is helping patients feel in control in their lives. To accomplish this, I ensure that you have an equal voice in treatment.
I have expertise in psychological treatments, but you are the expert in your life and in how treatment impacts you. Thus, we will form a collaborative partnership and make treatment decisions together. I believe that therapy should not be a “black box” or a magical process in which you get better but you don’t know how. I provide informed consent every step of the way so that you know what to expect and can make your own decisions about how to proceed.
I am highly experienced in one of the most widely used, successful, and evidence-based treatments for PTSD, Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT).
CPT is a type of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) specifically developed for survivors of trauma. I have also found that Schema Therapy (ST) can be very helpful for adult survivors of chronic childhood trauma, who do not currently meet full diagnostic criteria for PTSD, but have a chronic depression or anxiety.
