Definitions of Specialized Skills and Modalities
- Talk therapy – The purpose of talk therapy is to help people identify issues in oneself or one’s life. Together we identify and understand your thoughts, emotions, and physical experience inside yourself and out in the world. We talk with one another, listen to each other, be together, and use our relationship to hopefully create a safe place for you to exist and explore.
- EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) – EMDR is a research-based psychotherapy treatment designed to alleviate the effects of traumatic memories, process through unresolved emotion, and bring troubling experiences into resolution. It uses the existing processing system of the brain, focus on specific experience, combined with bilateral stimulation, which stimulates communication between the left and right hemisphere of the brain. For more information, please visit www.emdr.com, the official website of the EMDR institute.
- Somatic Experiencing – Somatic Experiencing is a body-based treatment used to locate and release defensive responses of fight/flight/freeze that have become stuck in the body. S/E is a non-invasive process of noticing and experiencing based on the physiological and psychological understanding of how trauma is held in the body. For more information, please visit www.traumahealing.org, the official website of the Somatic Experiencing Institute.
- Attachment theory – the study of how people attach or connect in relationship based on interactions with early care givers. Typically, people have repeated patterns of attachment based on early learning which affects how we relate to others and ourselves in early years and then further into adult life. The need to attach is hard-wired in mammals as part of our survival mechanism.
- Evolutionary Biology – https://www.nature.com/subjects/evolutionary-biology
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) – https://www.apa.org/ptsd-guideline/patients-and-families/cognitive-behavioral
- Mindfulness – https://www.mindful.org/what-is-mindfulness
- Breathwork – There are many types of breathwork. In general, breathwork is the process of using your breath in a variety of techniques to either calm, invigorate, release, or clear the body and integrate with the mind.
- Meditation – There are many types of meditation each with different functions. In general, meditation is a way of going inward with the intention to tune in and pay attention to thoughts, emotions, or energy in the body in order to become conscious of what is happening in you and how you relate to the world around you.
Additional Specialized Training
- Chronic Pain – Ongoing study of the treatment of chronic pain with specific attention to associative neural networks (neurobiology), ACT (Acceptance and Commitment therapy, the work and study of Dr. Michael Moscowitz, M.D., and research studies on integrated medicine.
- Migraine Treatment – trained with Steven Marcus, who completed a successful clinical test using an integrated approach to interrupt migraine without medical intervention. http://www.emdrwest.com/Articles/emdr-migrainesStudy.pdf
- Project Management Professional – certified Project Manager through the Project Management Institute, PMI, https://www.pmi.org, PMP license #1494916