Therapy for the ones who keep it all together for everyone else.
EMDR, Trauma, and anxiety Therapy in fox chapel, upper st. clair, and Throughout Pennsylvania by Telehealth
Helping you navigate anxiety, trauma, and self-doubt so you can live empowered rather than overwhelmed.
When life doesn’t look or feel the way you want it to.
You’ve got a lot of good things going for you, but then, there’s that one area that you can’t seem to get past. When you hit up against it, you notice that things seem harder, less in your control, and more overwhelming than you’d like them to be.
You don’t want to live in this messy middle any longer than necessary, and you’re ready to seek out the answers and get to the root of it once and for all so you can get on with living your life well, with more peace and confidence.
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Triggers, flashbacks, dissociation, and emotional overwhelm are your nervous system’s way of telling you you survived something difficult but still need to process the experience and “metabolize” the impact of the traumatic memory and energy still in your body. When you need help to put the past in the past, EMDR can help you to get the “time-stamp” that helps your brain and body to `move forward.
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Families and relationships can be complicated, and emotional wounds in childhood and early adulthood can be overwhelming because we don’t have the resources, support, and experience that we need.
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Maybe your feelings tell you one thing, your thoughts tell you another, and you want to bring in the Biblical perspective and seek God, but it all feels so overwhelming and difficult to make traction. I can help you sort it out.
I believe you deserve relief from pain and hope for healing.
If you are tired of struggling so hard just to be “okay,” I want you to know that healing IS possible, and thriving is, too. I know they’re possible because I see them take place every day in my clients, and I have personally experienced healing from debilitating anxiety, panic, and PTSD in my own life.
I know it can be hard to believe healing is really possible when you don’t feel it and have felt so beaten down for so long, but if you are ready to heal, I’ve got the faith, the expertise, the training, the experience, and the compassion to walk with you on your healing journey.
You don’t have to figure it out alone.
My specialties fall within two main areas of care:
1) Trauma, Abuse, and Anxiety Recovery
2) Christian Faith-Based Therapy for Women
However, no matter your gender nor your faith orientation, if you are seeking trauma, abuse, or anxiety recovery therapy, let’s talk about your needs.
So, if you have been praying for help, this may be a good fit for you and an answer to your prayers. And, if you’re in a complicated relationship with your faith right now, or someone who seeks to focus only on trauma healing without a faith-based perspective, that’s okay, too.
Either way, if you are ready to be treated with respect, compassion, and clinical excellence as you are supported in your healing journey, let’s connect.
I’m Michelle.
How I can help
I specialize in deep therapy for trauma recovery and lasting change.
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Through utilizing EMDR as the base treatment method and bringing in both somatic and parts work (as well as faith-based work for those who desire), deep healing takes place.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is also a tool that I utilize, but it is not effective alone to treat trauma due to the way that the logical part of the brain for thought is less available when one goes through an overwhelming traumatic experience.
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The body really does keep the score as Bessel Van der Kolk’s book of the same name says.
Experiences are sometimes too deep for words due to the traumatic nature of the wounding. Yet, working with the awareness of tension and relaxation in the body can give “voice” to the unspoken experience and be honored in therapy work so that they body can release the tension and traumatic memory energy..
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Our nervous system and memory networks hold the perspectives of all that we have lived through. This includes different experiences, ages and stages of our developmental periods, and any attachment wounds we carry.
To survive, we learn to strategize through “parts” of ourselves responding to keep us surviving. These parts are all trying to benefit us in some way, but various parts can be at odds with each other.
For instance, one “part” wants to eat a pan of brownies because we’ve had a hard day and wants to relax like in childhood, but another “part” wants to “take the high road” and scold us for not sticking to our eating plan because it knows we want to be healthy.
Working with our “parts” can help us to uncover ways that our strategies for survival are butting heads with each other, and therapy can help all parts to be seen and heard with solutions agreed upon. (In this example, we’ll have two small brownies and give the rest away to the neighbor, for instance).
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EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. It is a therapeutic technique that utilizes an 8 phase protocol to help you stay within a tolerable range while processing trauma or stuck points through the use of bilateral eye movements or bilateral tapping to process a chosen presently disturbing experience so that it loses its disturbance. It does this through allowing the body, mind, emotions, and spirit to communicate with each other through repeated sets of bilateral movements.while focused on the changing nature of the targeted experience. This is an evidence-based modality backed by science.for the treatment of trauma.
How it works
Life is stressful enough right now. Let me make this part as easy as possible.
Click this link to choose a day and time for a free, confidential consultation. Ask any questions you may have, see if you feel we would be a good fit to work together, and if it’s a good match, we will talk about next steps, and if it isn’t, we’ll help you find someone who is a great match for you and your needs.