Services

During Acute Traumatic Grief Therapy, we help you focus on healing in the wake of a traumatic event. While there are many events in life that can cause us great discomfort, stress, or pain, we are often able to heal and continue our lives beyond those events. Sometimes, however, a traumatic event can leave us struggling to get back on our feet, especially with regard to our emotions and socialization. Grief is a natural process that everyone experiences at one point or another during their lives. However, grief that does not abate or continues to impede daily life long after the event will become unhealthy over time.

Acute Traumatic Grief Therapy is designed to not only address the underlying causes for complicated or prolonged cycles of grief, but also to equip you with the tools you need to understand, identify, and handle the emotional repercussions of lingering grief. For example, one of the most commonly used and holistic tools for healing trauma is known as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT.)

CBT focuses on giving you the tools you need to become stronger, happier, and less stressed from events of the past while also providing the tools needed to better cope with any future difficult circumstances of your life. A forward-thinking, focused approach is what we aim to deliver in our Acute Traumatic Grief Therapy sessions.

Traumatic events of our childhood often stay with us for much longer than events we experience as adults. One of the biggest reasons for this is that our tools for handling complex, painful situations have not yet developed while we are still young. For this reason, we provide uniquely focused therapy that aims to help children who have experienced trauma or adults who are still carrying the pain of an event that occurred in their childhood.

Sadness, stress, nervousness, and apprehension are all emotional forces that are healthy responses to many events in our lives. When these emotions become overwhelming, all-encompassing, or take up more mental and emotional space than they should, depression, anxiety, or both can occur. Contrary to some popular opinions, depression is not just a feeling, and anxiety is not just overstressing. Both depression and anxiety are conditions that can occur when our brain has – for one reason or another – been caught in a cycle of negative emotions and the corresponding brain chemicals.

There are many causes of depression and anxiety. Some are genetic, others are tied to trauma, others still are caused by temporary life circumstances and stressors that are difficult to deal with. One unifying factor between all of these types of depression is that they are all treatable.
Our depression and anxiety therapy focuses on identifying the root causes of depression and anxiety so that you can take real world steps to breaking the patterns of habit, lifestyle, or interaction that can contribute to negative emotional cycles. Much like our other forms of therapy, we set out to equip you with the time-tested tools that can help you make personal progress beyond the therapy sessions. Home life, work life, and education can all be negatively affected by depression and anxiety, but therapy can help reduce or prevent negative effects on our lives.

In addition to offering our service to those in need of therapy, we also aim to help bolster the future of mental healthcare by offering clinical supervision for rising professionals.  If you have clinical hours you need, we can offer structured, valuable, and supervised time that will both meet your requirements and leave you with priceless mental healthcare experience.

We are happy to offer a quiet, serene, and private location for clients to visit for therapy.  We take the fact seriously that therapy offers clients a space that is separate from the stressors of life, a space in which they can healthily engage with the challenges they hope to heal.  Our office is conveniently located, easy-to-access by public transit, comfortable, and modern.

We are proud to be able to offer voice and video counseling through the Skype app. If travel is costly or difficult for another reason,  Encrypted Skype-based therapy can be a great way to get access to our services within the comfort of your home. All you need is a computer with a webcam, microphone, and internet connection, and we’ll be able to help you heal with the aid of modern technology.

Whether you prefer face to face therapy or simply don’t have a computer ready for remote therapy, if you need therapy at home, we offer in-home therapy services where our therapist comes to you. Our goal is to facilitate mental wellness, and if that means traveling to you, we’re ready to do so.

Some challenges involve both members of a relationship and can be more easily processed and overcome together. For this, we offer couples therapy, which allows for emotional pain, disagreements, or misunderstandings to be worked out with the help of an independent guide who deeply cares about your well-being and the well-being of your relationship. Sometimes, an interpersonal approach to conflict resolution that includes both members of a relationship simultaneously can be the difference between misunderstanding and healing.

Families are interconnected by nature, and that means that changes of any size in the lives of one family member can have lasting effects on other family members.  In many cases, bringing families together to work through issues can ensure that everyone is on the same page and can work together on emotional and mental wellness.  Issues such as divorce, the coming out of a family member with regard to sexual orientation, illnesses, or even the loss of employment can all be very difficult to address without family members working together.  For this, family therapy as a modality of care can be incredibly valuable.

 

The first step to healing on an emotional and mental level is to identify that you’re in need of healing in the first place. Grief, anxiety, trauma, and depression are all conditions that can sometimes be easily written-off as something not serious, especially when social pressure or work stress encourage us to ignore our pain. None of these types of mental pain should be ignored, and identifying each possible condition is an important skill to have, especially if you’ve experienced a traumatic event or period of life. With that in mind, let’s explore some of the signs that you might be suffering from anxiety, depression, or traumatic grief:

Anxiety

Anxiety is often characterized by an excessive sense of nervousness, impending doom or danger, and the physical symptoms that often accompany these types of fear. While it’s entirely normal to experience nervousness from time to time, anxiety that persists over a long time or that is particularly intense can begin to interrupt life. If you find yourself unable to focus, sleep, or work as effectively due to excessive worry or nervousness, therapy might be a very good fit for you.

Anxiety can be induced by a number of major life events. It’s common for people to suffer from anxiety as a result of employment issues, struggles with personal health or the health of a loved one, issues with debt, housing struggles, and even school or education pressures that simply grow out of control. Often, these issues become subjects of anxiety because they are complicated and difficult to process all at once, but therapy can help break them down into actionable processes.

Likewise, if you experience an anxiety attack or a panic attack (characterized by sudden heart rate increases, extreme fear, sweating and other physical flight-or-fight responses,) it’s a possible sign of excessive anxiety in your life.

Depression

Depression is characterized as excessive feelings of sadness, hopelessness, and, sometimes, worthlessness, that often result in a loss of joy from activities you would usually gain happiness from. Some people suffering from depression find themselves unable to even enjoy basic pleasures like food, sex, or socializing. Many sufferers of depression also experience anxiety, sometimes as the result of feelings of guilt or self-hatred. Additionally, if you feel inexplicably tired or fatigued, depression could be the root cause.
Trauma and Grief

While nearly everyone experiences grief at some point in their life, like all emotions, it can become overwhelming. Trauma occurs when events occur in our lives that we are emotionally unprepared for, and we cannot cope with said events. Trauma and grief often exist aside one another, as the loss of a loved one, friend, or even pet can blindside us and leave us unable to cope alone. If you find yourself questioning the deepest foundations of your beliefs, self-worth, or life choices, you might be experiencing traumatic grief. Likewise, severe bouts of sadness, crying, or hopelessness can be a sign that you are experiencing traumatic grief.

We believe it’s important to reiterate that therapy is about healing more than anything else. Unlike a broken arm or a bruised elbow, mental pains and injuries are not always immediately visible, and they cannot always be treated with medicine alone. Our minds are built for thinking, communicating, and learning, and those activities are how therapy can help bring healing to our minds and hearts.