Our Approach

Understanding our Services

We are an integrative and holistically-minded psychotherapy practice. We serve individuals across the life span using all of the latest scientific research and evidence-based practices to inform how we provide treatment. We utilize a “whole-person” approach and aim to find the root causes surrounding mental health concerns.

We specialize in various mental health concerns and offer play therapy, cutting-edge trauma treatments (Brainspotting, EMDR, cognitive processing), CBT, DBT, play therapy, drama therapy, and parenting support. Additionally, we have expertise in helping families navigate the divorce process.

Psychotherapy Treatment Modalities

The following treatment approaches can be utilized with people of all ages and is not an exhaustive list of all the therapies we offer:

Play Therapy

Children can lack the verbal skills to express themselves but that does not exempt them from experiencing the same range of emotions that we face as adults. Play is a child’s inherent language and through play therapy, a variety of developmentally appropriate techniques are utilized to help the child explore, understand, and organize their world. It is a evidenced based approach that builds on the communicative and learning processes of a child’s developing brain. Through the safety and familiarity of play, children presenting with many different concerns can access and process these difficult feelings with the support of the play therapist. The play therapist acts as a safe base to assist the child in recognizing, processing, and coping with these emotions and challenges through a variety of techniques. Depending on your child’s developmental stage, needs, and temperament, the therapist may use child-led, directive, or an eclectic blend of both strategies.

Sandtray Therapy

 Sand tray therapy is a modality that combines play therapy and expressive arts. In a session utilizing the sand tray, the client is provided with a tray or box filled with sand as well as access to a variety of miniature figurines to manipulate and create different scenes and environments within the sand tray. Figurines may include anything from jungle animals and dinosaurs to people in a variety of careers, and other things found in nature. The therapist may provide a prompt in creating a sand tray, but ultimately, it is up to the client to prescribe the meaning and function of each figurine. Many children (and adults!) can struggle to verbalize emotional states, especially when they are actively struggling with trauma and anxiety. The nonverbal and autonomous nature of sand tray therapy allows for a relaxing sensory experience to foster and reinforce feelings of comfort and security while exploring and processing difficult themes and emotions.

Drama Therapy

 Drama therapy is an expressive and experiential therapy similar to art or music therapy. It is an embodied practice that is both active and experiential. Drama therapy uses techniques that are typically used in theater to achieve therapeutic goals, such as storytelling, improvisation, role play, creative writing, and guided visualizations. During session, individuals can mold new behaviors, rehearse new skills, and experience emotional and physical integration and expression. This can be helpful for children and adults alike looking to nurture personal growth and transform difficult behaviors.

CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy)

 CBT is a common type of talk therapy that focuses on negative thought patterns and works to help the client identify and reevaluate the way in which these thought pattens effect their behaviors. Therapists and client work closely to collaborate and develop strategies that ultimately change client behavior.

DBT (Dialectical Behavior Therapy)

DBT is a type of talking therapy. It is based on cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), but is specially adapted for people who feel emotions very intensely. ‘Dialectical’ means trying to understand how two things that seem opposite could both be true. For example, accepting yourself and changing your behavior might feel contradictory. But DBT teaches that it’s possible for you to achieve both these goals together. DBT focused on four main components: mindfulness, distress tolerance, interpersonal effectiveness, and emotion regulation.

Brainspotting

Brainspotting (BSP) is an evidenced based therapy that is designed to help people access, process, and overcome a variety of issues including:

  • negative emotions
  • trauma/PTSD
  • pain
  • addictions
  • chronic stress

According to therapist and creator David Grand, the direction in which people look or gaze can affect the way they feel. Specific eye positions each link to their own “brainspot,” or an area of the subcortical brain that retains thoughts and emotions. The brainspotting therapist acts as a guide and secure base in working with the client to identify these brainspots and to process the emotions, thoughts, and physical sensations related to said issue or brainspot. Its goal is to bypass the conscious, neocortical thinking to access the deeper, subcortical emotional and body-based parts of the brain. Brainspotting functions as a neurobiological healing tool to support clinical healing and foster security within the therapeutic relationship.

EMDR

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a form of therapeutic treatment that was originally designed to alleviate emotional and physical distress associated with traumatic memories. The EMDR therapist supports the client by utilizing a variety of bilateral stimulation techniques (lateral eye movements, tapping, or audio stimulation) to allow the client to access negative memories, thoughts, and emotions in a relaxed and secure state. Through this evidence based practice, the client is able to access the traumatic memory network to enhance processing and make new associations to the memory that are more balanced, adaptive, and regulated. These new associations are reinforced and result in complete information processing, new learning, elimination of emotional distress, and development of cognitive insights.

Pain Reprocessing Therapy

Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT) is an evidence-based system of psychological techniques that retrains the brain to interpret and respond to signals from the body properly, subsequently breaking the cycle of chronic pain. Pain Reprocessing Therapy has five main components: 1) education about the brain origins and reversibility of pain, 2) gathering and reinforcing personalized evidence for the brain origins and reversibility of pain, 3) attending to and appraising pain sensations through a lens of safety, 4) addressing other emotional threats, and 5) gravitating to positive feelings and sensations.

Parent Coaching

When behavior or communication challenges come up at home, it can be difficult to know what route to take with all the options out there. We are here to guide you with positive/conscious parenting methods based on science and evidence-based practices. Our parent coach is certified through the Jai Institute for Parenting and also uses a Circle-of-Security approach to help you raise emotionally healthy children, without compromising limits, boundaries and values.

What does parent coaching look like?
Parenting coaching is parent-centered. Our parent coach helps you explore and integrate your own upbringing to understand how it is affecting your current parenting strategies and determine where some changes might be beneficial for the relationship with your child. We’ll give you education on attachment and nervous system science, the brain and child development, emotional intelligence, and effective communication. We’ll also give you skills to use immediately in your home, both to help your child, and to also help you with your own emotional recognition and regulation. The change must start with you.

What parent coaching isn’t:

  •  fixing your kid (your kid, you, and your relationship aren’t broken)
  •  blaming you for getting it wrong
  • telling you what to do because we have all the answers

Parenting coaches provide guidance, education and accountability, allowing families to create their own empowered parenting model, rather than fixing, prescribing or diagnosing.

Couples Counseling / Couples Therapy

Whether you are entering couples therapy to strengthen the foundation of your relationship or seeking support for a specific issue, we can help. We provide compassionate, non-judgmental guidance to help couples develop deeper insight into themselves and their relationship dynamics. As individuals, we have our own needs, values, and perceptions. During therapy, we use both traditional and creative interventions, such as role reversal and reenactment, to improve communication, manage conflict, develop understanding, and increase connection.