Anxiety & Depression
Do you find that excessive worrying keeps you up at night?
Do you find yourself often thinking “catastrophically” imaging the worse case scenarios in everyday life?
Do you have specific anxieties around relationships, money, health or other areas of life?
Depression can sometimes be related to very specific events in our lives such as a major loss (a death, a breakup or divorce, losing a job), illness or other life changing setbacks. At other times it can seemingly “come out of the blue” causing us to lose interest in activities we love, to become distant from loved ones; to sleep too much or too little, or eat too much or too little, among other symptoms. Whatever the source of your depression we can work together to develop an action plan to help you recover your energy and momentum.
Types of Treatment
Reiki
Reiki is a healing technique based on the principle that the therapist can channel universal healing energy to a patient by means of light touch, no touch (holding hands above the body), or by distance healing. This energy activates the natural healing processes of the patient’s body and restores balance, both physical and emotional.
I am a certified level II practitioner of Reiki Jin Kei Do. Reiki Jin Kei Do is a lineage of Reiki that originated with Dr. Mikao Usui (a doctor of philosophy in Japan) and was further developed by the Venerable Seiji Takamori, a Zen monk who spent almost 20 years in India Tibet and Nepal studying ancient teachings and healing methods to enhance the practice of Reiki.
Reiki is used for physical conditions such as chronic pain, insomnia, exhaustion, and for emotional conditions such as depression and anxiety. Reiki can be used in combination with any other therapeutic approach to bring healing and relaxation.
EMDR
(Eye Movement Desentitization Reprocessing)
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a psychotherapy discovered by Dr. Francine Shapiro, that helps clients to heal from the emotional symptoms and distress that result from traumatic life experiences. EMDR therapy has been shown to accelerate emotional healing that could take a very long time to achieve in the past by regular talk therapy. EMDR helps remove blocked emotions that were stored deep in the brain at the time the trauma occurred. Traumatic memories are not processed by our brains the way normal, everyday memories are. Traumatic memories are stored in the brain just the way they went in – unprocessed with all their original emotions and details intact. The primitive parts of our brain want to retain these original emotions and memories as a survival tool – to be able to detect any threat that is remotely like the traumatic event. However, our fight or flight response may be triggered by any event or situation that reminds the primitive part of our brain of the trauma event, even though our conscious and rational mind is not aware of any threat. This can cause us to react disproportionately with anger or fear to situations where they aren’t warranted. It is very important to note that while engaging in EMDR therapy YOU are in control, and YOU can decide to stop at any time during processing and/or refocus the therapy.
Recovery in therapy using EMDR is an eight phase process:
Phase 1: The first phase is history taking. You and I will spend at least the first session exploring your life history, noting particularly traumatic events, going as far back in time as possible.
Phase 2:> In the second phase of treatment, therapist and client work together to develop self-soothing and coping tools for the client such as “safe space” and “container” so that the client may leave the therapy session in a stable state, even following intense emotional work.
Phases 3-6: In phases three to six, the client and therapist develop a list of “targets” – disturbing memories to be worked on. The list of targets is put into order according to the level of disturbance ranging from 0-10. Generally it is advisable to begin work with lower level of disturbance memories to see what effects the client will experience from the technique. While examining each “target” the “negative core ideas” taken in by the client during the traumatic experience are examined, sa well as well as all emotions experienced by the client during the processing of the target. Any and all physical sensations that occur while the client is processing the target are also explored. Processing continues on each “target” memory using bilateral (back and forth) stimulation – either through visual cues (the therapist waving their hand back and forth, or using a light bar for example) audio cues, (i.e. bilateral auditory stimulation through headphones) or by tapping, such as on the knees or palms of the hands. The traumatic memories are repeatedly reprocessed until their Subjective Units of Disturbance reach zero.
Phase 7: Phase seven involves a review of the EMDR work done to date. It is also a time to review self-calming and soothing exercises that were learned in Phase 2 and to assess the efficacy of these.
Phase 8: Phase eight consists of examining the progress made thus far and may look forwards to anticipated stressful events and resourcing (installing) more positive ways of dealing with those situations.
Hypnotherapy
Hypnotherapy is a process whereby the therapist gently helps the client achieve a state of calmness using a combination of words and perhaps music to help the client’s brain waves to slow down. Hypnotherapy allows the therapist to speak to the client’s unconscious mind to make suggestions for positive changes being sought by the client. Usually our conscious minds are so busy, and so loud that it is difficult for positive messages to get through. If our subconscious mind is able to accept positive suggestions for change, then we are able to change our day to day behavior.
Hypnotherapy is the avenue to make change through the subconscious mind.A great many issues can be addressed using hypnotherapy. Some common ones are: habit changing, anxiety, depression, grief, insomnia, enhancing performance in sports and academics.
