Individual Therapy
Individual Therapy Sessions (50 minutes)
How it works:
Individual therapy is a process by which we meet one to one on a schedule of your choosing. I typically recommend we meet on either a weekly or bi-weekly basis and then once you feel good enough to stretch the sessions out then we typically meet monthly until you feel ready to end sessions and transition into the world on your own with the tools you have learned and inner healing you’ve completed.
The Intake Process
Therapy starts by identifying where you are at and where you want to be. We then come up with a plan on how to get there. Having an idea of where you are going is important and we will build up a picture of this in your very first session. The first session is the intake process. I do this face to face vs sending you a document to fill out as it helps us get to know each other a bit before we dive into the deeper work. This is a simple process where I collect some background info from you and other questions which will help me serve you better.
The Inner Work
Once the intake is complete then I’ll check in with you to see how you are feeling about transitioning into some inner work (Internal Family Systems Therapy). The work we do targets the root of the issues you bring to therapy. It works by identifying the situations in your past and wounding that happened to cause the symptoms to develop. For example, social anxiety can develop in response to being humiliated, rejected or shamed in the past. In IFS, instead of trying to give you tools and ways to manage the social anxiety, we work with the parts who are socially anxious and help to heal and reprocess the memories of that original event that caused them to take on that burden of being anxious. When we heal the original event, we are reconsolidating it which is modifying it to become what was needed vs what was wounding. When this process is complete the symptoms resolve.
How long it takes
Many people ask me how long this process takes and my answer is usually “as long as it takes.” This healing work is very deep and while some clients can experience relief in a few sessions, others it can take time. My ask is that we bring a lot of patience into this work. I’d rather spend a lot of time up front in permanently transforming the issue vs spending a lifetime trying to manage it.