Perhaps something has happened in your life that has left you angry, sad or isolated.  Perhaps you are distant from or fighting with people you care about, or are stalled in your work or education. Or perhaps you can't describe exactly what is wrong, but you feel unsettled and unable to enjoy life.  I listen to you carefully: to your day to day struggles and also your deeper wishes and fears.  This is the essence of counseling or psychotherapy.  Through these hours, you give your life the time and attention that it deserves.  You can live your life with less conflict and with more ease and purpose.

Below are my thoughts on some of the common troubles that bring people to counseling or psychotherapy.

Depression

The symptoms of depression include sadness or depressed mood and a loss of interest or pleasure in most activities of life.  In addition, one may experience changes in appetite, sleep, energy or concentration level, and troubled thoughts.

Depression can arise from stresses, worries, setbacks, or from disappointments.  Sometimes we find ourselves far away from the life we hoped for and we despair of finding our way back.  Therapy involves respectful listening and careful strategies to re-engage with life.  Long term, the goal is to define and create a life that is worth getting up for each morning.

Anxiety

The modern human world moves fast and anxiety is often a reflection of this.  You may struggle to relax, to sleep, to focus and you may spend a lot of time in worry or planning.  More serious symptoms can include patterned thoughts or behaviors of obsessive compulsive disorder, fears and discomforts of phobias,  or seemingly random feelings of panic.   

While the thoughts, feelings and behaviors of anxiety can seem non-sensical or random, I believe strongly that at a deeper level they are logical attempts to right the world.  Together we work to identify the triggers in the world that start the spiral of worry and vulnerability and to understand them.

If you face unreasonable demands or live in situations that deaden your life, we think about ways to renegotiate these.  If you are anxious, your body is a key player in feeling un-safe and un-well, and we must both respect the body's feeling and work to calm and ground it by practical means. 

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

The Trauma of PTSD is the sudden, graphic, and unbidden invasion of death into our life.   Even for those braced for situations of life and death - such as soldiers, police officers, doctors and nurses - the reality is seldom what we imagine and it changes us. 

A traumatic event becomes a disorder when there is no forum for the person to think it through and talk it through.  And within PTSD is a strong fear of infecting others with the same troubling images.  In therapy, I provide this forum.  It is my responsibility to face the telling of what you faced in reality.