Counseling in SLO

Your session may include an integrative blend of therapies

Coherence Therapy

In this approach, problematic symptoms of psychological distress are seen as adaptive strategies. In other words, your mental and emotional symptoms, behaviors, and states of mind are fully coherent according to your life context, your history, and your unique internal system. Unless there is an underlying disease or other organic, biological issue present, such symptoms can be seen as protective or adaptive attempts to solve a greater problem.

People come to therapy because these “adaptive strategies” are not necessarily healthy, and they absolutely end up causing more long-term distress and problematic issues. Most clients seek to heal and grow into healthier and more fulfilling patterns of coping and experiencing life. Coherence therapy can help to identify and unwind the core, underlying emotional learnings that are at the root of unwanted symptoms.

This approach harnesses the brain’s innate capacity for transformational change through an endogenous process know as memory reconsolidation. Old emotional learnings that have kept you stuck in problematic patterns can be dissolved and updated with new, healthier ways of being. Coherence therapy is an experiential style of therapy that has the potential to facilitate deep, lasting shifts in symptoms.

Emotion Focused Therapy

Emotion focused therapy (EFT) is a non-pathologizing counseling approach that utilizes an understanding of the wisdom of emotions in order to access therapeutic change. This is a collaborative process where all feelings are respected as intelligent information. Emotions are like an internal guidance system that reveals your core needs, values, perceptions, and beliefs. Unpleasant emotions inform you about problems in your life that need to be solved, and they reveal a path of action to get your needs met. Ignoring feelings can suppress self-knowledge along with the motivation to take action. It also leaves your needs unmet. The result of this is frustration, stress, and overwhelm. It may even contribute to a sense of hopelessness, withdraw, and depression.

If you want to cultivate wellness, it is more effective to listen to the messages embedded in emotions. When feelings are attended to, they can teach you how to reduce stress, improve communication, and move towards living a more satisfying life. Emotions are not pathological disruptions that need to be conquered. They help you to understand yourself, connect with others, and adapt to the world around you. EFT can assist you in making sense of your emotional landscape. It aims to broaden the capacity to regulate challenging feelings, and it builds the skill of effective emotional expression.

Emotions can be complex because the immediate feeling is not always what it seems. There are primary, secondary, and instrumental emotions, as well as adaptive and maladaptive ones. Your therapist will help you sort through these layers. Adaptive emotions directly reveal the truth of your authentic, core needs. Maladaptive emotions point to old wounds from the past that need to be healed and updated with new information. These are the wounds that keep you trapped in familiar, negative cycles.

EFT works to unwind maladaptive emotions and bring you into contact with healthy, adaptive ones. When you identify and bring awareness to your emotional experience, the brain begins to regulate and experience new meaning. This is a key ingredient of transformational change. Your therapist serves as a process guide who will walk alongside you as a co-navigator in this discovery.

Somatic Therapy

Somatic therapy is an experiential technique that involves mindful tracking of the body as part of the psychotherapy process. In this approach, the body is considered as a source of information that holds untapped resources for healing. There are moments when talk therapy can become stuck in intellectual, rational, and verbal processes that seem go in circles but don’t necessarily go anywhere productive. Although talk therapy is a very important tool that will be part of your session, there are times when it is highly beneficial to shift focus and accelerate progress by tapping into the wisdom of the body.

When we begin to name what is happening in the body in the here-and-now, this serves as a point of entry to the subcortical brain. Feelings, physical sensations, images, movement, posture, gestures, metaphor, and sensory fragments are the language of this part of the brain. By working in this domain, we are speaking a language that the subcortical brain understands. This is a powerful and direct way to unlock and transform unprocessed emotions and memories, improve emotional regulation, and also to shift the nervous system out of the fight, flight, and freeze response. Observing and naming somatic sensations is also a powerful method to develop a witnessing mind. Witnessing mind is the ability of the mind to objectively observe itself, and it is an important skill for increasing self-awareness and improving mental and emotional wellness.

Parts Therapy

This is an experiential approach that uses mindfulness, imagination, and metaphor to explore various aspects of self. It centers on the idea that every person’s psyche is comprised of different “parts” or different internal dichotomies. For example, one part of us may want or need one thing, while another part wants something else. This is perfectly normal, and not necessarily a pathology. These internal dichotomies operate both consciously and unconsciously to either help or impede us in some way.

Although the idea of “parts” may seem strange and unfamiliar, there are compelling benefits to allowing ourselves to conceptualize and dialogue this way. Similar to somatic therapy, the process of naming, describing, and exploring in “parts language” is also a powerful method to develop and strengthen a witnessing mind.

The imaginal language of parts therapy is an effective way to access and resolve distress states that are held in the subcortical brain. Like coherence therapy, parts therapy can facilitate change by reorganizing old emotional learnings. It can increase capacity for problem solving, help reclaim personal strengths, bring a renewed sense of wholeness, and create more self-agency.

Grief Counseling in SLO

Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy

MBCT incorporates mindful awareness practices into cognitive therapy. The aim is to help you break free of negative patterns by changing your relationship to difficult thoughts and emotions. This approach cultivates a witnessing mind state. It strengthens the ability to move towards uncomfortable feelings with curiosity and observation, rather than staying stuck in activation or avoidance.

Thoughts and emotions are never static. They rise and fall like waves on the ocean. You are not your thoughts and emotions. You are not the waves on the surface of the ocean. Your true self is more like the silent, unbounded nature of the bottom of ocean. It is difficult to access this part of the self when you are lost in the waves on the surface.

MBCT can help you to tap into your inner stillness and respond flexibly to your emotional states, rather than becoming overwhelmed by them. When automatic responding is lessened, an enhanced sense of choice arises. This is how MBCT cultivates a sense of internal freedom. Research shows that it can be as effective for depression as taking antidepressants. It is also proven to be helpful for anxiety disorders, mood disorders, chronic pain, and overall unhappiness.

Mindfulness is a Superpower