Individual Therapy

Be curious, rather than judgmental, about what brings you to therapy…

You are desperate… and terrified.

What’s happened to you scares other people, and you feel so alone in this mess. It started with one thing, but now it seems like everything is falling apart around you.

The veneer is starting to crack, and it’s increasingly difficult pretending that you are okay. You now see the underbelly of life, and you desperately want to go back to how things were before.

What has been done cannot be undone. You panic when you start to imagine your future – you are not ready for it.

You know that you are in there somewhere, but you just can’t find yourself.

Will you ever feel okay again? Will this ever make sense?

I’m not going to kick you while you’re down…

… and I’m not going to let you do that to yourself either.

Our judgment of ourselves reveals our harshest inner voice. This voice is behind all our fear and doubt and suffering.

We will not play the “let’s figure out how you suck game” together, but rather let’s try to find some compassion for what you are experiencing and how you got to this place.

It sounds simple, but it is a thread that will be woven throughout all our work. Curiosity will be a pillar in our work.

Your situation is special and complicated.

You’re not going to share it with just anyone.

What you are experiencing is urgent, and you need someone to help you right now.

You already feel overwhelmed, stressed, and worried all the time; and it feels daunting to let someone in right now.

Our initial goal is to make you feel like you belong here. I will jump in with you exactly where you are and get the context as we continue to dive in.

I will be what you need me to be.

When you are so stressed that your thoughts race and you become overwhelmed, I will teach you how to breathe. In our sessions, we will develop a working scale of distress to help you understand when and how to intervene to reduce your suffering when you are not in my office.

As you master the ability to reduce your distress, we will then explore the underlying reasons why you are feeling this way.

When your identity has been lost somewhere along the way, it needs to be named. We learn how normal this is; and, yet, why do we get so stuck during major life changes? I will help you mourn what you can’t find anymore and bring in who you want to be.

When you feel like your world is falling apart, I offer real empathy and compassion. I can’t take away this pain, but I can show you how to create boundaries around it and make it easier to carry around with you.

When you are disconnected one minute and enraged another, I bring you back to earth and help you learn how to stay here. You will learn techniques to engage in your breath and body to stay present. You will learn what sets you off, why it sets you off, and that you have the strength to change it.

Tamara* fought her way out of an abusive childhood…

… and into a demanding professional career.

She sought therapy in order to understand why she was so easily enraged at work, because it was damaging her career. She also had a hard time figuring out why she couldn’t form real relationships. Her greatest fear was that she would be alone… but equally feared she would end up in a relationship mimicking the abuse in which she grew up.

In therapy, she learned how to observe her anxiety objectively as something designed to protect her, which ultimately led her to being able to tame it. Tamara learned how her chaotic upbringing and the abuse she experienced led her to an adult life without boundaries. She not only learned how to establish boundaries with healthy and unhealthy people, but she was also able to find and nurture a healthy partnership with another person.

Greg*, father of three, was at the very beginning of mourning…

… after his partner was diagnosed with a terminal illness.

He was either overwhelmed with feelings or completely numb in order to get through a day of work, pickups/drop offs, and terrifying visits to the doctor. His mourning was just beginning…

In therapy, he found the words to describe his experience and the tools he needed to get through each day. He had an hour a week to feel on his own and put his pain away in order to function. Therapy was a place where pain was okay and the mask came off. I held his pain with him to ease the burden.

He learned how to grieve, and he learned how to be a grieving parent. He began to carry his grief in a new way so that he could offer his family what they all needed to be okay… in a new okay way.

Mary* had always dreamed of becoming a mother, but…

… the birth of her first child didn’t bring her the joy she thought it would.

She dismissed her feelings of confusion and depression as the “baby blues” that everyone talks about and put on a happy face.

She also knew that her hormones were all over the place; she figured that was the reason for her dread and sleepless nights as the rest of the house was quietly asleep.

And sometimes she felt very angry – even to the point of hating her husband. This terrified her, too.

“What have I done?”

“What is wrong with me?”

“Why am I not loving this?”

Mary’s first accomplishment was recognizing she belonged in therapy and deserved to be getting help. Therapy allowed her to admit to the scary thoughts she sometimes had about being a mother. She learned real coping mechanisms to manage and reduce these experiences. She discovered that becoming a mother meant she had to admit what parts of her life she had lost.

As her depression and anxiety lessened, she sank more into life with her child. She could make decisions again. She could laugh again. She could connect to new people again. She even found her own interests again and brought back attention to her relationship.

Therapy will connect you to your life and
change you forever.

Therapy will give you the support and tools you need to change your life.

Therapy will help you become the person you know you can become.

Tamara, Greg, and Mary all thought they would be in therapy forever. They worked hard, and I worked hard along with them. Now they are all out there living their lives without me. Their lives are not perfect – far from it. They are all now managing the complexities of life, because of the tools they gained in therapy.

In therapy, you will find the part of you that believes in you and knows how to make healthy choices. You will find and strengthen the part of you that can be compassionate to your self when things are going wrong.

You can expect to learn how to manage your own emotions and release other peoples’ without cutting them out of your life. You can expect to understand that taking care of yourself first is what allows you to be present to the people in your life that need you.

You can expect to find the courage to be honest and clear with both yourself and others, and one day you will do the things that right now you are most afraid of doing.

You can change.

You can have control of your thoughts and emotions.

You can feel stability when people around you do not.

You can feel okay. You can feel joy. You can feel satisfied and well-rounded.

Your new-found insight into who you are and how to find the courage to do different things will get you different results.

Now… it’s your turn.

Tamara, Greg, and Mary would not have believed me if I had a crystal ball and could show them their life at the end of treatment – it’s okay that you don’t either! But a part of you has the courage to have hope for yourself.

Step into that part of you when you make this call.

Call me to at (202) 656-8515 to talk about how you want to change your life.

I offer a free 15-minute phone consultation where we will talk about what you are going through, how I can help you, and if we are a “good fit” to work together. It’s your turn to be a success story.

*Stories are an aggregate of clients and not real clients.