Archive for November 2015
Optimal Wellness
Optimal Wellness – Are you sick and tired of feeling sick and tired? (Forgive the pun!) Let’s face it…it’s tough to take care of ourselves in this society. All around us are pressures and constraints – work more, eat quickly, transport children, check email, clean house, do errands, spend less money, make more money, find quality time to be with family…the list could go on. Stress on your body mounts, and you feel exhausted. With time, illness follows.
Holistic counseling can help you:
- Prioritize your wants, needs, and have to’s
- Get 8 hours of sleep and still have 16 hours for your day
- Improve restorative sleep
- Eat to feel great, rather than to prevent disease
- Maintain a healthy weight without restrictive dieting
- Increase energy, as well as facilitate emotional and physical healing
- Find movement exercises that you enjoy
- Be happier in your work and social life
Call me today at 303.547.8327 to schedule your free initial 30-minute consultation and learn more.
Career Issues
Career Issues – Confused about what kind of career you want to pursue? Tired of your old job, and seeking something more meaningful? Frustrated that you can’t seem to earn the money you feel you deserve? Feeling stuck and angry that you have been passed over for promotions time and time again? Thinking of starting your own business? Or, maybe you like your current job, but are completely exhausted from the stress.
These are only a few examples of what we may experience as we transition from our teens into adulthood, from midlife through “retirement”. Holistic counseling can help you:
- Reconnect with your inner self, so that you minimize doing and maximize being
- Balance planning and goal setting activities with intuitive guidance
- Overcome the fear that keeps us stuck between a “rock and a hard place”, instead of “in the flow”
- Follow your heart, not just your head
- Receive the support you need from available resources
If you would like to learn more, call me today at 303.547.8327 to schedule your free initial 30-minute consultation!
Life Transition
Life Transitions – Most of us will face some level of difficulty as we transition into a new phase of our life. Perhaps you are adjusting to a new life without your former spouse. Maybe you are seeking a new career, or are retiring from the work you performed your entire life. You may be having a new baby, and are struggling with the changes a growing family brings. Holistic counseling can help support you through the discomfort that transition brings, and offer you new perspectives that may transform an ending into an inspiring new beginning.
Call me at 303.547.8327 to schedule your free initial 30-minute consultation and learn more.
Young Adults/Teens
Holistic counseling can help your son or daughter address concerns about:
- Anxiety or stress
- Depression
- Self-esteem
- Divorce or separation
- Insomnia
- Nightmares
- Bullying
- Aggression
- Trouble with the law
- Poor school performance
- Trauma
- Distractibility, short attention span
- Hyperactivity, impulsivity
- Identity struggles
- Eating issues
- Life skills
- Relationships
- Teen parenting
For Parents:
- Improving your relationship with your teen
- Structuring activity as well as down time for children
- Preventing video game, internet, cell phone and other technology addictions
- Learning how brain plasticity, nutrition, and exercise affect mental health
Call me today at 303.547.8327 to schedule your free initial 30-minute consultation and learn more.
Severe Depression or Aggression: If your son or daughter is suicidal or homicidal, please call 911 for immediate medical care since I do not provide emergency services. I provide only outpatient level of care. I do send you and your family special blessings for healing and love. Know that sometimes we do need to intervene on behalf of someone we care about, and that sometimes we need the blessing of medicine, hospitalization or residential treatment during critical moments.
Caregiver Stress
Care-giver Stress – Your loved one has been diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, and your life has changed. You worry and grieve, and shift through a myriad of emotions. You begin to wear down, feeling overwhelmed and stressed. You may have rescheduled your days or reprioritized your goals. Likely you have spent much time researching possible treatments or alternative options for extended care.
If you could use help during this stressful time, holistic counseling can:
- Support you through your grief
- Provide stress-reduction and relaxation techniques
- Discuss complementary treatments that integrate with conventional care
I would be honored to be there for you, to help you process the guilt we often feel for attending to our own needs, and to offer you ways to renew and reenergize. Bringing back balance in your life will ultimately be of higher service to the one you love.
Call me today at 303.547.8327 to schedule your free initial 30-minute consultation and learn more.
Severe Physical Illness
Whether you have a severe illness like cancer, or a variety of medical conditions that are adding up to a huge stressor, life is now centered around taking care of yourself.
Holistic counseling can help:
- Support you as you cry and grieve for the losses in your life – sometimes we hesitate to tell family and friends how we really feel, especially when they are trying to help
- Explore various ways to reduce stress and allow the body to relax into a healing state
- Talk with you about spiritual concerns that may arise
- Discuss complementary options that integrate into your traditional medical treatment plan
- Assist you with resources for integrative care or treatments that you choose
Complementary options I provide that target mind-body communication, reduce stress, and increase relaxation include:
- Mindfulness meditation
- Guided imagery
- Progressive muscle relaxation
- Body-focused or somatic meditations that help you tune into the body’s messages
- Artistic/creative expression
- Bioenergetic methods
Other therapies to explore:
- Restorative or therapeutic yoga
- Nutrition support
- Acupuncture/Acupressure
- Massage or other body-based techniques
- Reflexology
- Music therapy
- Aromatherapy
- Other energy-based methods
Call me today at 303.547.8327 to schedule your free initial 30-minute consultation and learn more.
Spiritual/Transpersonal Issues
Spiritual Trans-personal
Namaste! I love this Sanskrit greeting which means The Light of God in Me recognizes and honors the Light of God in you, and in that recognition is our Oneness.
Do sayings like that ever provoke in you the “aha!” experience? Do you ponder about the meaning and purpose of your life? Do you wonder about whether or not there is a higher force? Have you ever had experiences that you could not explain, and worried that others would think you were “crazy”? Perhaps you find yourself questioning your beliefs and want to discuss them with a “neutral” person who would understand and not judge. If you seek nondenominational spiritual counseling, I would be honored to support you as you contemplate these mysteries.
Spiritual/Trans-personal Approaches
I can help if you are seeking treatments for mental health concerns that:
- Are based upon universal spiritual principles
- Have been found to facilitate transpersonal (i.e. beyond the personal realm) experiences
- Consider symptom origins from a transpersonal perspective
- Understand the difference between psychotic and transpersonal symptoms
Philosophy
My own journey into spiritual questioning led me beyond my Christian upbringing into a quest for the common truth universally taught across all of the world’s wisdom traditions. I continue to explore them all, and to seek further experiences of sacred states of consciousness. I am fascinated by scientific findings from quantum physics, prayer research, remote viewing and distant healing studies, entanglement experiments, spiritual/energy healing, and inquiries into the nature of consciousness and the power of intention. And I persist in reviewing what these investigations reveal. For perhaps the first time in history, due to the benefit of increasingly sophisticated technology, science is beginning to confirm what the wisdom teachings have declared for millennia. Love is a powerful uniting force. Love crosses mysterious boundaries. Love heals.
Call me today at 303.547.8327 to schedule your free initial 30-minute consultation and learn more. Namaste!
Relationships
Do you feel that you are constantly repeating the same old patterns that lead you to feel empty, hurt, frustrated, depressed, angry, maybe even abused? Do you feel like you’re walking on eggshells? Always fighting? Perhaps you notice you have lost yourself or are overly focused on pleasing others. Maybe you and your partner simply want help to improve communication and understanding, and return harmony to the relationship. If you said yes to experiencing these or similar situations, holistic counseling can help!
Philosophy
I provide individual, couple and family therapy using a systemic and holistic approach.
- My systemic approach works best if partners or family members each receive their own personal therapy, try to implement at home what they have learned, and address needed issues together in couples or family sessions you may want to decide whether you prefer that your individual therapy counselor be the same or someone different from the therapist who facilitates your couple or family sessions
- If my clients request that I provide both individual and family therapy, it will be important to know that I believe that relationship difficulties are ultimately created from inauthentic individuals coming together and blaming each other in various ways for unhappiness; as individuals improve their ability to live authentically and in alignment with their inner being, they will be happier and healthier in their relationships
- Since we are interconnected with each other, a change in one person effects changes in the way others respond. Couple or family therapy will help all persons in the relationship adjust to these changes
- As M. Scott Peck, MD has described, I believe that we truly love another when we want for them what they want for themselves. Relationships begin to heal when we allow ourselves and each other the space to grow, when we mutually nurture each other with healthy boundaries, and when we care enough to really try to communicate in a way that we each feel heard and supported
Approaches
You can benefit from:
- Spiritual approaches that care for the inner soul and foster authentic ways of being
- Improved skills in communication, boundaries, etc.
- Bioenergetic and somatic approaches that help you release as you gain insight from your body about the type and place of held emotions
- Artistic expression and dream analysis that informs you of unconscious feelings or motivations
- Intention exercises that help you focus and attract the qualities you envision in relationship
Call me today at 303.547.8327 to schedule your free initial 30-minute consultation and learn more.
Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity
You struggle to keep your focus and attention on the task at hand. You may feel that job after job bores you, so you switch around frequently, perhaps making the decision impulsively. Appearing hyperactive to others, you might find yourself jumping from one thing and bounding to the next. In relationships, you find yourself leaping from partner to partner. Maybe they leave complaining you aren’t ever reliable, or you end the relationship in a short time out of frustration or because you found the next love interest. We all get bored at times and find ourselves distracted. But if your problem with inattention has significantly affected your life, then it is time to get help. Holistic counseling offers the following solutions.
- Nutritional assessment is essential. Many clients who have struggled with ADHD have been found to be addicted, so to speak, to sugar. Their diets are largely simple refined carbohydrates, and are deficient in needed vitamins and minerals. This can affect the nervous system, lead to hormonal imbalance, and result in mood and behavioral symptoms.
- Psychoeducation and behavioral therapy are primary. You will need to learn how the brain rehardwires itself continuously (i.e. brain plasticity) to meet the demands placed upon it, so that you can retrain it. In our society, with so many people reared with wild special effects television, highly interactive video games/computers, and the like, it is no wonder that the brain can no longer relax. You will have to reprogram it and I will teach you how. My clients have found significant relief from this treatment alone, though it does take some time.
- Behavior management and social skills are essential for helping young people to manage school and home tasks, and adults to organize and perform better especially at work.
- You will want to find out if learning disorders or giftedness issues have become a problem.
- Coping skills can help you deal with frustration and stress.
- Mind-body techniques and counseling can help with the accompanying depression, anxiety, or self-esteem issues that tend to arise.
- Bioenergetic techniques may be useful in “resetting” your biology.
- Medications are available to help. They can provide relief until new “reprogramming” skills and bioenergetic exercises help you rehardwire your mindbody, and your neurotransmitters (e.g. dopamine) adjust. Because long-term effects have not been studied, most of my clients prefer to not medicate their children or teens due to the risk of side effects or suicide, except in cases of extreme aggression. Adult clients have sometimes chosen to use medications temporarily to be able to function better at work.
- Family treatment is extremely important. Most parents of ADHD children are overwhelmed. Families benefit from communication in a structured setting. Parents can learn more helpful techniques for setting boundaries and limits, establishing age-appropriate rules and following through. In addition, parents often need help becoming more consistent and calm in the home, since chaotic energy is passed around from parents to children, as well as from children to parents.
Call me today at 303.547.8327 to schedule your free initial 30-minute consultation and learn more!
Trauma/Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Trauma/Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Whether you have experienced one significant traumatic event or a series of traumas over your entire lifetime, you can benefit from holistic counseling:
- Bioenergetic methods can target the places in the body where trauma gets stuck
- You find new ways to cope and react to your distressing thoughts and emotions
- Your increased ability to be exposed to anxiety-producing events helps free your life
- Biofeedback can help you gain conscious control of your stress response
- Foods and nutrition can rebalance the chronic stress environment of the body
- Mindfulness meditation and other stress-reduction strategies promote relaxation
Call me today at 303.547.8327 to schedule your free initial 30-minute consultation and learn more.