Counseling
Individual Sessions. Skills-Building. Collaborative.
Rather than traditional talk therapy or passive listening, I actively engage with an empowering approach for you to resolve relationship distress patterns to prevent breakup or recover from relationship endings.
I also specialize in helping you overcome regrets, insecurities, codependency and relationship dysfunction, even if you've been stuck in painful patterns for years. Learn Social-Emotional and Relationship Health Skills, while rebuilding your self-worth, self-trust, and your ability to feel joy and purpose.
What to Expect
Navigate divorce, separation or a breakup
Step-by-step heartbreak recovery
Rebuild your confidence and purpose
Recover from Narcissistic Abuse
Process anxiety, emotions and triggers
Overcome maladaptive coping methods
Learn relationship and boundaries skills
Cleanse regrets, shame and resentment
Focus on relational trauma and c-PTSD
Breakthrough codependency patterns
Credentials
Experienced. Evidence-Based Therapy.
As a licensed counselor, I give relationship distress and endings the treatment it deserves. I have earned a Master of Science Degree in Counseling from GCU, a Master's in Organizational Behavior, and personal experience with divorce. I am also an IFS-Informed Therapist and have 12 trainings and certifications including Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy and Certified Clinical Trauma Professional, with focus on relational and complex-PTSD.
Feel Real Results
"I just wanted to say thank you for your gift. It is wonderful... for the first time in my life, I am seeing and feeling healing!!!!"
More Than Talk Therapy
"Truly grateful for all you have done for me. I can feel such a shift. I have had dozens of therapists throughout my life, but have never felt more valued and understood. Thank you for helping me live my life again."
Expert Guidance
"I feel so lucky to have found you as my expert guide - helping me through the rough waters of divorce and on the road back to myself. You've made such a difference in such a short time."
Restore Confidence
"Thank you for all your help over the past several weeks. I feel better because of you. You have definitely restored my self-worth and pushed my confidence to move forward with my life and career."
Heal Heartache
"I hope you have a smile knowing how you are really having a healing impact on other people because of what you walked through yourself. Thank you for personally understanding divorce and getting me through the heartache of it."
Calm Anxiety
"I wouldn’t have found my way back to myself without you. I went from daily panic attacks and bad anxiety to now totally able to calm myself. You are the best."
"Heartbreak is a form of grief and loss that can cause serious issues with insomnia, anxiety and even depression or suicidal thoughts. Heartbreak should be taken very seriously, as should our efforts to recover from it."
Guy Winch, PhD
Relationship Distress and Breakups Impact Every Layer of Our Being
PHYSICAL / NEUROCHEMICAL / PSYCHOLOGICAL / PHYSIOLOGICAL / SOCIAL / PERSONAL
Breakups, disappointments, dysfunctional patterns, and the push-pull dynamic of 'mini breakups' within a relationship are common nowadays, but this doesn't make them any less triggering, painful and traumatic.
To make matters worse we minimize heartache... others tell us we should be happy alone, to 'love ourselves more,' 'let go' 'find someone new' or 'get over it.' This mindset inevitably blocks our ability to go through the five essential stages of deep healing so we can effectively grieve, heal and cleanse internalized beliefs, betrayal, fears, anger, shame, triggers and insecurities that impact our sense of lovability, self-worth and capacity to feel calm and produce oxytocin, serotonin and other 'feel good' hormones and neurotransmitters, and our capacity to trust, love, and connect in future relationships.
The surge and decline of hormones after a separation or breakup are similar to drug addiction withdrawal, the emotional triggers are similar to having PTSD, and the pain activates the same part of the brain associated with severe burn or a broken arm. De-minimizing and understanding the neuroscience of heartbreak helps us fully heal.
Five Stages of Breakup Recovery
Empowering. Educational. Transformative.
Learn to Heal Through Each Stage and Feel Better Faster.
With compassion and expertise, I provide an empowering, action-oriented approach for you to heal so you can feel better, faster. S.W.I.R.L provides an overview of the essential stages of healing from a breakup, as adapted from psychotherapist, Susan Anderson. I provide coursework as a major factor in my clients healing and feeling results.
S.W.I.R.L.
Rage
The goal is to S.W.I.R.L. through the stages more efficiently with awareness and empowering methods to emerge out of healing better able to love and live life than ever before.
S.W.I.R.L. Overview
Healing is Imperative to Prevent Long-Term Consequences
SWIRL can last for weeks, months, or years without proper healing, stuck SWIRL-ing through symptoms over and over, showing up in future relationships and impacting your emotional, mental and physical health, resulting in avoidance tactics, maladaptive coping methods, self-medicating and addictive behaviors, low self-worth, pathological loneliness, conflict and relationship dysfunction, anxiety and depression. Unhealed, and over time, these symptoms caused by breakups can lead to reduced immune function, chronic inflammation and other serious, stress-related medical conditions such as heart disease.
Shattering
PRIMAL STRESS RESPONSE
Devastation, anxiety, even panic attacks. Likely the most painful stage and you'll find yourself looping back into until fully healed. Ignites FIGHT/FLIGHT stress response as in life-threatening situations! Your nervous system is responding as if you are lost in the middle of the forest alone forever.
Withdrawal
CRAVINGS AND LONELINESS
Acute “neuro-biological crisis” similar to heroin withdrawal, as it involves the opioid system and loss of oxytocin. Increase in adrenaline and cortisol, shifts in serotonin and dopamine so you to feel 'on edge' with digestion issues and more. Wrenching loneliness and may idealize ex, looping thoughts or obsessing for a new 'love fix.'
Internalizing
REGRET, SHAME, SELF-BERATING
Most critical stage when your heartbreak “wound” is susceptible to “infection” because it impacts your core and self-worth. To feel somewhat in control, we direct anger at ourselves with self-indictment and even self-hate. Our mind would rather feel powerful than powerless, so we take on an unrealistic amount of the blame.
Rage
EXTERNALIZED PAIN
Turning point in the healing process when you refuse to accept all the blame. Stems from prolonged feelings of helplessness and depression. Surges of anger and retaliation fantasies towards your ex or displaced on others. Learn healthy anger-processing tools, as this is essential to fully healing.
Lifting
MOMENTS OF PAIN RELIEF
Moments of peace, lifting you out of the pain. Issues arise when we try to force lifting by depressing feelings or with maladaptive distress behaviors. Unprocessed feelings cycle us back into Shattering and the other SWIRL stages. Learning to lift with our feelings, self-connected, allows for healing and recovery, self-trust and Security rather than Shattering.
Security
SELF-TRUST AND INNER CONNECTION
The proof will be in the feeling as you experience more Security, rather than Shattering. Practicing the tools and skills you learn in the Breakup Recovery Program, builds your Self-Leadership to resolve regrets, process heartache, emotions, triggers, shame attacks and mini-SWIRL's, empowered to calm your nervous system and feel Security within.