Online Individual Counseling

A trauma-informed approach is a framework that acknowledges the widespread impact of trauma and anxiety on individuals. It prioritizes creating a safe and supportive environment, understanding the effects of trauma, and integrating this awareness into counseling. Key principles we focus on in our individual counseling services include promoting safety, trustworthiness, empowerment, collaboration, and cultural sensitivity. The goal is to prevent re-traumatization and help individuals build resilience and regain control after experiencing trauma. Some may not consider their life experience to include trauma. Yet, the way they have learned to cope in life may reflect the impact of trauma, even if they don’t recognize it in themselves.

An attachment-focused treatment is a psychotherapeutic approach rooted in attachment theory, emphasizing the impact of early relationships on emotional well-being. Counselors explore and address attachment style and patterns (secure anxious, avoidant) developed in childhood, aiming to improve interpersonal functioning and emotional health. Counselors use this framework to help clients identify maladaptive attachment dynamics, foster secure attachments, and develop healthier ways of relating to themselves and others, promoting emotional resilience and personal growth.

Client-centered counseling is rooted in the belief that individuals possess an innate capacity for self-understanding and growth under the right therapeutic conditions. The counselor creates a non-judgmental, supportive environment where individuals can feel valued, fostering trust and openness. Empathy is central, as the counselor seeks to understand the individual's unique, subjective experience and reflect this understanding to validate their feelings. Authenticity is emphasized, with the counselor openly sharing their own experiences when appropriate, strengthening the therapeutic bond. Individuals are viewed as experts on themselves, with the counselor facilitating their self-exploration and personal development. This approach highlights the individual's natural drive towards self-actualization — realizing and fulfilling their potential. 

Somatic-focused counseling is a psychotherapeutic approach that recognizes the mind-body connection, emphasizing the role of the body in emotional well-being. It involves increasing awareness of bodily sensations to explore and release tension or trauma and anxiety held in the body. Techniques may include breathwork, mindfulness, and movement exercises. This approach aims to integrate physical and emotional experiences to enhance overall well-being, commonly used for issues related to trauma, anxiety, and stress.

IFS is an approach that views each individual as a system of protective and wounded inner parts, guided by a core Self. This model suggests that the mind's multiplicity is natural and beneficial. Inner parts often take on extreme roles to protect us, but the Self, present in everyone and indestructible, knows how to heal these parts. IFS is an evidence-based psychotherapy that helps individuals heal by accessing and integrating their protective and wounded parts, fostering both inner and outer connectedness. IFS is a framework for understanding relationships and engaging with life through the qualities of the Self: confidence, calm, compassion, courage, creativity, clarity, curiosity, and connectedness.

CBT is an evidence-based intervention that stresses the role of thinking in how we feel and what we do. It is based on the belief that thoughts, rather than people or events, cause our negative feelings. We assist the client in identifying, testing the reality of, and correcting dysfunctional beliefs underlying his or her thinking. The counselor then helps the client modify those thoughts and the behaviors that flow from them. CBT is a structured collaboration between counselor and client and often calls for homework assignments in individual counseling.