Approach

Psychodynamic therapy is an approach that involves gaining a deeper awareness of one's emotions and early life experiences. This approach is insight oriented and helps you recognize repressed emotions and unconscious influences impacting your life and behaviors. This theory understands the significant impact our past has on our present and invites making connections and becoming curious about how our patterns learned in our past might be still be a part of our present. The therapeutic relationship between client and therapist is a central focus and an arena in which relational patterns can be safely explored. From this safe space, you can be empowered to transform dynamics that no longer serve you.

Experiential therapy is a dynamic and transformative approach to psychotherapy that prioritizes direct emotional engagement and exploration of one's inner world. Rooted in the belief that profound healing occurs through authentic, emotionally charged experiences, this style of therapy encourages clients to actively participate in the therapeutic process. By inviting clients to the present moment and facilitating a safe and empathetic therapeutic environment, experiential therapy empowers individuals to gain insight, process their emotions, and develop new, healthier ways of relating to themselves and others.

Somatic therapy is a form of body-centered therapy that looks at the connection of mind and body. This approach integrates breath work practices to help you slow down, notice and be with your physical sensations in the “here and now.” We work with your nervous system slowly and gently, and in this way you can experience how your emotions move and follow them through to their release. This works to release tension and what feels frozen; freeing you to flow more openly in and through your experiences.

EMDR is an approach that considers how symptoms of trauma result from past disturbing experiences and memories that continue to cause distress because the experience was not adequately processed. These unprocessed memories contain the emotions, thoughts, beliefs and physical sensations that occurred at the time of the event. When the memories are triggered these stored disturbing elements are experienced and cause the trauma symptoms to activate. EMDR works to reprocess this material and integrate new beliefs, sensations and thoughts.
(Paraphrased from the APA website on EMDR)

Mindfulness means maintaining a moment-by-moment awareness of our thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and surrounding environment, through a gentle, nurturing lens. Mindfulness also involves acceptance, meaning that we pay attention to our thoughts and feelings without judging them—without believing, for instance, that there’s a “right” or “wrong” way to think or feel in a given moment. When we practice mindfulness, our thoughts tune into what we’re sensing in the present moment rather than rehashing the past or imagining the future.
(Taken from greatergood.berkeley.edu)

Narrative therapy views people as separate from their problems and centers the client as the expert on their lives. Creating space to identify the core stories you tell yourself, we look at where this story started and how it impacts you today. We look for the buried stories that can be rewritten and woven into the ongoing and future story of your life. This approach also allows us to consider how social and cultural stories and constructs have been internalized in your own life.