We provide the following therapy services:
- EMDR Therapy
- Spiritually Informed Therapy
At Strength and Healing Counseling we believe that true healing is experienced through relationships, one’s spiritual journey, and the discovery of shared meaning.
WHAT IS EMDR
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing is a mental health treatment unlike anything you have seen before. EMDR therapy is designed to resolve unprocessed traumatic memories in the brain. EMDR therapy can be completed in fewer sessions than other psychotherapies.
EMDR THERAPY
As things continue to change in this busy world more and more flexibility is needed. An intensive model of therapy allows more flexibility than the traditional weekly therapy session model.
Treatment is individualized to meet your needs in a manner that is unique to you. When might an intensive model be appropriate?
- If something needs to change more quickly than the traditional model of therapy allows. This might be relief from severe anxiety, unresolved trauma, needing to quickly adapt to the loss of a loved one, etc.
- If you do not have time to wait for healing and change to happen.
- If you find that cognitively you understand what needs to change, but somatically your body still feels confused.
- If you find that keeping up with weekly therapy appointments is more stressful, and less helpful because of how hectic your life is.
- Intensives can create change that stays with you because it allows for the healing work to begin, continue, and enhance without waiting for that next appointment.
Intensives are provided with intentional planning, preparation, and purpose.
Planning: If an intensive model is agreed on, planning will include scheduling our first session in which we determine what timing, what we will focus on, the hoped for outcomes, and an individualized preparation list.
Preparation: Intentional self care the day before and the day of, journaling, connecting with personal support before and after the intensive, preparing your space at home (if the intensive is virtual), adjusting the therapy office (if the intensive is in person) so you feel safe and comfortable. This can include intentional placement of furniture, setting the window shades just where you want them, lighting, use of essential oils, having water and food available.
Purpose: Being intentional about why the intensive is happening in order to get the most out of this life changing experience.
“Intensive therapy brings supercharged healing and when done well can create significant transformation in a matter of a few hours or days.”
ADJUNCT EMDR THERAPY
Here is where EMDR therapy is offered in partnership with a primary therapist. When the primary therapist is working with you doing important work, and this work is slowed down or blocked by unresolved trauma, EMDR can be a key. It does not supplant or replace the primary therapeutic relationship, but rathers joining alongside for a specific purpose, for a specified limit of time, with an exit plan in place before it starts. There are at least three ways in which this approach can help.
To summarize an adjunct intensive model can be helpful when you want to continue work with your therapist, progress need to be accelerated, and you and your therapist both gain increased insight into your trauma so the work your are doing can continue and be even more impactful in the long run.
- There may be something blocking progress, such as a trauma memory that is hard to access.
- You want to keep working with your therapist.
- You want to accelerate progress.
- You and your therapist can gain new insight together about how the brain and the body processes trauma.
SPIRITUALLY INFORMED THERAPY
Spiritually informed therapy intentionally allows for the integration of your spiritual experiences into your mental health treatment. What you experience as sacred is welcomed, acknowledged, and listened to in this healing space.
Here you receive supportive acknowledgement of your experience, empowerment to set your own boundaries and maintain control during therapy, skilled assessment and planning for how to best respond.
Trauma is always serious, but is especially harmful when experienced in the context of spirituality, faith, or religion. Healing comes in stages, most especially when it is needed at this existential level.
Expertise, experience, and empathy enable us to help you in this area one careful step at a time. Sometimes therapy will simply touch on this. Other times it will be indirectly integrated. Sometimes it will be directly requested and can become a primary focus during therapy. Ultimately, that which you hold as sacred is to be honored, understood, and nurtured in this space.