Mood disorders are characterized by intense emotional disruptions that may last two weeks or longer. These periods of emotional and psychological intensity can involve extreme unhappiness (clinical depression), extreme elation (mania), or both, and can significantly interfere with a person’s functionality in their day-to-day life. Medication combined with therapy can help greatly in treating mood disorders.

Everyone experiences some anxiety, but persistent, intense anxiety on a daily basis may also include nervousness, worry, fear, and a sense of foreboding about the future. It can be very disruptive and change how a person lives in an attempt to avoid experiencing major anxiety. There are numerous evidence-based treatments for anxiety, and a whole host of coping tools that can markedly improve anxiety levels and teach people that the “worst case scenario” is not the only possibility in life events.

Could we be living in any more stressful times? Managing stress has become one of the survival tools of the 2020’s. Mindfulness, relaxation and breathing techniques, along with an understanding of how stress impacts the body, are used to help manage and alleviate persistent stress. Often, treatment includes learning about self-care and how to prioritize obligations and stresses to be more manageable.

Whether it’s having the same argument with your partner over and over, thinking about starting–or ending– a relationship, or other issues with friends, colleagues or partners, I provide objectivity and understanding. People often repeat relational patterns that were learned as children, but that no longer work as adults. Unraveling the past from the present is one of the keys to future healthy relationships.

Memories are not only in our heads but are also held in our bodies. Sensorimotor Psychotherapy (R) is a trauma treatment that heals by accessing emotions, thoughts and beliefs through the body while in a state of mindfulness. Traumatic events are reduced to memories of something that happened in the past, without any emotional charge.

Internal Family Systems (IFS) says that each of us has a core, inner self of peace and harmony. That self can be compromised by our parts, who each represent an aspect of our personality and history eg. the angry part, the hurt little girl, the responsible dad. IFS teaches people how to be curious about their parts and have them dialogue. Healing the parts will reveal the inner self.