Psychotherapy & Healing

Stress is a pretty bad thing for us; it depresses immune system functioning, shuts down the communication centers of the brain, and makes us feel miserable. Dealing with the emotional causes of stress can speed physical healing and prevent future illness. Therapy can improve your emotional health and give you a renewed sense of wellbeing.

Conflict, Chaos, Illness: The Silver Lining

A crisis in life represents both danger and opportunity. Although it does not seem like it when you are in the midst of one, crises are filled with opportunity for making important changes. But life’s challenges can make you feel lost and disillusioned, and there is a danger of making choices that reinforce the very problems you want to resolve.

Often, we react instinctively to end stress as quickly as possible, missing the opportunity in the crisis. The opportunity is to realign your life and do things differently, but first you must discover where the symptoms are coming from and what is going on at that level.

The Key to Transformation

The symptoms of discomfort — illness, depression, addiction, sadness, relationship breakdown—can lead us to frustration and despair or they can open the door, pointing to where life calls us to follow the law of our own being, inviting us to address what has been left by the side of the road, where we meet once again the parts of ourselves that have waited for us with the unfinished business of our lives.

In therapy I can help you become centered during times of crisis, moving from reactivity to responsiveness. Instead of being caught in the firestorm of the moment, learn to use a crisis to gain awareness of underlying issues. The first step is to generate awareness and understanding. It can also be useful to bring attention to the automatic thoughts and reactions which reinforce negative patterns. The next step is to find new, more adaptive patterns and cultivate them in your daily life.

Emotional Health & Physical Health: The Connection

Emotional health is closely tied to physical health. In fact, over 80% of physical illnesses and a large number of hospital visits are stress related. Stress due to life changes, financial issues, and home and work problems can negatively affect the body. The body responds to stress with physical illness and fatigue. Headaches and stomach problems are two of the most common ways stress appears physically. Counseling can speed healing by giving you the tools to deal with stress and its causes, returning you to your natural state of emotional wellness.

Connecting to life’s deeper messages can help empower healing and management of pain or illness. With physical pain and illness, often there are emotional aspects needing to be dealt with. Therapy can help you recover wellness by identifying and understanding emotional pain and its causes, helping you align with your self-healing capacity. The self-healing faculty is, after all, what modern medicine relies on. As Hippocrates said, “Natural forces within us are the true healers of disease.” Your inner capacity to heal and rejuvenate is a powerful ally in the recovery process.

I can help with effective tools to manage the emotional components of chronic pain, illness, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, or depression.

*Psychotherapy can be an important part of your healing process but does not replace medical treatment.

A seed hidden in the heart of an apple is an orchard invisible. (Welsh Proverb)