Pain Relief
People seek out a counselor for relief from mental or emotional pain like stress, anxiety, depression, ADHD, relationship conflicts or challenging life transitions. Choosing the right therapist is key. Research shows that the therapeutic relationship may be more important to your success in therapy than the therapist’s particular approach. For therapy to work best, you need to sense that your therapist genuinely respects you and collaborates with your on your goals. You may need to feel safe sharing intimate, maybe, even painful, details about your life. And, your therapist needs to seek out and accept your feedback on the therapy process. After all, it’s your journey.
Therapy
As a therapist, Andrea sees herself as a guide or facilitator for your journey toward pain relief and transforming your life. She calls it “therapy that works when you do the work.” Bilingual in Spanish, she specializes in working with individuals, couples and families with adolescents. She collaborates with her clients, drawing on tools from Compassionate Communication, Solution-Focused Therapy and the Gottman Method for couples. In addition, she applies a collaborative problem solving process process (CPS) developed while working with Fortune 500 company innovators. For the past two and a half years, she has used CPS to help at-risk adolescents and families learn to communicate and live more harmoniously.
EMDR
EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. Think of it this way. Have you ever reacted in a big way to some stimulus or provocation? It could be a loud noise, an image, criticism or a person’s behavior. Afterward, you wondered, “What the heck?!? It shouldn’t have been such a big deal.” It’s likely you were thrown back into some past negative experience. EMDR helps loosen the grip of the past so you can choose your response in the present moment. Andrea will be the first to tell you that the EMDR process may seem weird but the research and her clients’ results show that this magic wand really works to relieve emotional or mental pain.