Life is challenging at times and there are no one size fits all solutions. When we begin, I take a thorough intake interview which gives me important information about your needs and we go from there.
Accepted Insurance: Blue Cross Blue Shield PPO Insurance
In all sessions the priority is Feeling safe within the therapist client relationship. The modalities I integrate within and outside the sessions support the relationship to understanding oneself. The challenge is to begin to understand where the stuck or blocked concerns are in the body mind and emotional systems. Therapy or self- attachment pathways that I Guide you through can be creative, compassionate and inspiring.
My techniques are holistic and customized to each client, providing a very different experience to traditional talk therapy. Our creative, free-flowing session frees clients and helps address a range of issues, from parenting to bereavement, divorce, and sibling rivalry, to anxiety and depression, OCD, Sensory Integration disorder, and ADHD.
Young, pre-verbal children frequently express their feelings and life experiences through play. It is Nature’s instinctive, self-guided, self-healing process. Play is how children learn and it’s how they integrate developmental steps and challenges. It lets them control and explore their world from a safe position. While they focus on play, children let their guard down. They relax and begin to interact with me as a guide and playmate to resolve psychosocial difficulties. In this way I can steer their growth and development in a healthy direction
Who doesn’t love to kick off their shoes and feel the freedom of walking on sand. As an effective therapy sand offers a hands-on, tactile experience that children are drawn to naturally. Sand exploration often prompts a story that connects their inner and outer worlds through imagination. As figures and objects are chosen and arranged, their sand tray world reflects their inner world. Through free and creative play, this inner world becomes three-dimensional, allowing me to interpret recurring themes. As I guide the child to emote, the sand’s soft and soothing texture helps to keep them in a calm, relaxed, and playful state of mind.
EMDR is known as information processing therapy. It uses an eight-phase approach and is highly effective for clients who have suffered a traumatic or disturbing incident, causing memories of the event to be stored within the brain negatively. When elements of trauma are locked in and unprocessed memories of that event create a sense of having to actually relive it, with thoughts, feelings, body sensations, or flashbacks.
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In our digital age, with the dizzying, non-stop flow of information from smartphones, tablets, TV, computers, and so much more, the ability to unplug can offer a calming and therapeutic release from a mind on overdrive.
As a Hakomi* -trained therapist — a somatic, healing psychotherapy system — I often draw on specific mind-body techniques that help you become aware of specific feelings within your body and how your body typically reacts to them. I teach you how to recognize the physical sensation of safety and the opposite to help you cope when they are triggered. It’s a way of responding to pure emotion because deep-seated feelings don’t lie.
The Hakomi Method of Experiential Psychotherapy, created by therapist and author, Ron Kurtz, in 1981.
A powerful treatment modality, children through adult hypnotherapy is an integrative psychotherapy that addresses complex trauma, anxiety disorders to smoking cessation. To learn more, visit: heartcenteredtherapies.org
Mindfulness is an effective, behavioral coping therapy, inherited from the Buddhist practice of intent focus. It is used increasingly to great effect in Western psychology to relieve stress and its mental and physical symptoms. Practicing mindfulness until it becomes second nature helps to reduce anxiety, the cause of many behavioral challenges that get in the way of daily living. Children and adults learn how to breathe correctly and slow down enough to observe the world around them in more focus, with compassion and without judgment. As they master the therapy, especially in times of tension, they acquire a powerful tool to help reduce their anxiety. I show clients the technique and encourage them to practice it as often as possible between sessions.
How it works: We begin once we have set up a relaxed environment and my client feels comfortable talking to me with their eyes closed. We work on reaching a state of mindfulness, where they can become curious without judgment. Some people see colors when they feel a certain way. It’s a physical roadmap for your emotions and when you master it, you can control how you react to anxiety, stress, and a host of other issues. Mindfulness techniques are an especially potent tool for young children.
Address: 2530 Crawford Ave, Suite 305
Evanston, Illinois 60201