The Mind, Body, Psych Approach
We provide a warm, supportive space where you're safe to be who you are and explore any changes you may want to make. Your psychologist will provide feedback, perspective, and evidence based interventions to help you make progress on whatever it is that is bringing you to therapy.
Mind Body Psych gets its name from the undeniable connection between the emotional and the physical. For example, maybe you're prone to headaches, an often clenched jaw, a sore stomach, or tight shoulders. Sometimes, these symptoms are made worse by stress and anxiety. Other examples of the mind-body connection: raising our voice when recounting a personal story, laughing at an upsetting memory, or frowning in the middle of a sentence. Mind Body Psych will direct your attention to both the past and the present, exploring the "how and why" of ourselves to help you connect the dots and build awareness.
The Mind Body Psych Approach is tailored to align with your goals, wants, and needs out of the therapy process. Most often, it will incorporate cognitive-behavioral, compassion-focused, narrative, and experiential modalities.
Below is an example of what the above could look like in reality.
Mind
We might talk about how life experiences have impacted you and how/why they continue to affect your reaction to stressful situations in the present. For example, experiences of being bullied may lead someone to be hyper aware or distrustful of others. We might discuss common thought traps that humans fall into, identify the unhelpful thinking styles, and work on replacing them with helpful and rational thoughts. We might also look at where certain unhelpful core beliefs stemmed from, and how to improve the relationship you have with yourself.
This could also look like learning how and why our brains and minds can cause us all sorts of trouble. This is important because once we stop blaming ourselves for how our brains operate, we can learn how to work with what we've got.
Body
We often spend time working on mindfulness and grounding strategies so that you can practice bringing your body a sense of calm, even when your mind doesn't feel it. Strategies like progressive muscle relaxation, autogenic training, deep breathing, guided imagery, and mindfulness practice are all ways of activating the parasympathic nervous system in our bodies that is responsible for bringing us feelings of calmness. In therapy, we also draw attention to how the body reacts in the moment to help you develop a fuller understanding of self. Noticing that a fist is balled up, or that the voice is raised, or that there's laughter in response to a painful memory is sometimes the clue we need to realize that we have not fully processed our emotions.
Psych.
Self-compassion is the thread that weaves all of these possible courses of action together. Self-compassion means allowing yourself the time to slow down, practice mindfulness, engage in self-kindness, and remind yourself that setbacks, failure, and mistakes are part of being human. In fact, those setbacks and mistakes are actually responsible for our growth. Self-compassion means nurturing the relationship you have with yourself and seeing value in what you have to offer the world. Because you do have value, even when it's hard to appreciate it. And that's okay if it's especially hard to appreciate sometimes. You're only human, after all.