Here are some of our areas of expertise.
Specialties
“What is wrong with me? Why can’t I just get it together?”
Anxiety and Depression
Having the occasional off day or intrusive thought may seem like a normal part of life, but what if you are having more off days than not? What if those intrusive thoughts are keeping you up at night or interfering with daily life? Lets face it, there is no shortage of negative content in our world. Coupled with stressors of daily life, long standing insecurities, past traumas, and lack of free time to take for ourselves no wonder why anxiety and depression is growing at such a rapid pace. What a lot of people don’t take into consideration is the physical symptoms of anxiety and depression; the fatigue, the aches, the digestive dis-ease, the tight muscles. Our brains are on overdrive telling us “something is wrong.” We have to put in the work to calm that overreaction and relearn from the inside out what it means to have a healthy relationship with our emotions- to see them as a tool instead of an anchor.
“This is supposed to be the happiest time of my life. Why do I feel this way?”
Perinatal and Maternal Mental Health
Perinatal mood disorders affect 1 in 6 to 7 birthing persons. It is the largest medical complication in pregnancy. When we say perinatal mood disorders we are talking about all the mental health issues that may arise from pregnancy and the postpartum period; this includes postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety, postpartum OCD, postpartum PTSD, and postpartum psychosis. While working with someone during their pregnancy and postpartum period it is important that we assess for risk factors that may influence postpartum mental health issues. Risk factors may include a previous mental health diagnosis, high risk pregnancies, experiencing birth trauma, previous experience with infertility and loss, a NICU stay and lack of social and financial support. This list is not comprehensive though as there are many reasons that someone may experience mental health issues during and after pregnancy.
The journey into motherhood is intricate and vulnerable. The standard we put on what a mother is can by nature keep us from asking for help, but I cannot express enough how important it is to do just that. It is normal to feel a wide range of emotions towards ourselves, our partners, and even our babies. While it is all “normal,” it does not mean it is not difficult. It is normal to not feel like yourself or feel like you have lost your “old” self after having a baby. My goal is to support birthing people, provide resources and education, discuss therapeutic options, and help remind the person THEY matter too, as their identity into parenthood may be rapidly
“There are days I think I am ok and, then all the sudden, something happens and my mind is reliving it again. When will I get over this?”
Trauma and PTSD
Trauma can take on many different forms, but at its core trauma is defined by the individual experiencing it. What I mean by that is the way our brain’s process an event and react to it should not be scrutinized or up for debate by anyone. In recent decades the mental health field has begun researching how trauma affects our brain and thereby affects us as people. We moved away from looking at an individual from the perspective of “what is wrong with you” to “what has happened to you.” One of our brain’s functions is to keep us alive and if our brain sees a potential threat our stress response turns on automatically. With trauma what we see is an overactive stress response to situations that may no longer be putting us in danger. You may have used the term “being triggered” before to describe this feeling. Traumatic memories are stored differently in our brains than normal ones. They are not always linear in nature or describable by words. They are intuitively emotional and sensory.
The good news is we can reteach our brains what is actual threat vs a perceived one. This process includes giving ourselves grace and permission to feel what comes up while relearning how to calm the stress response when it turns on. It is a delicate balance not only between aligning our mental health, but our physical response to trauma as well. The saying goes “the body keeps the score” when it comes to trauma. When we can relearn how to use our responses to a perceived threat as a tool instead of as a threat we can learn to have autonomy over them.
“The world is moving around me and I’m trying to keep up, but I am struggling.”
Life Transitions
Sometimes even things that seem exciting can make us feel overwhelmed and, you know what, that is totally normal. The part of the brain that fires off when we are excited is the same part that fires off when we are anxious. Any type of change, even that which is good, causes us to go through a process of loss and reinvention. That can come with a whole set of emotions. We constantly strive to evolve, understand who we are, and make peace with how our past has shaped us. Maybe you aren’t feeling like you can turn to close family or friends for support or maybe their excitement and encouragement is causing the feelings of uncertainty and fear to get lost in the weeds. It can be helpful to carve out time to slow down and assess how we are handling periods of change. Getting in tune with how we are feeling will help us as we continue to navigate new decisions and experiences.
My goal is to assist in confidence building so that making those decisions and having those new experiences feels empowering. Whether your life transition is a positive one or one that wasn’t by choice, therapy can help work alongside you as you find the new version of you.