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Mental Health SPECIALTIES
Stress and Anxiety Therapy
Anxiety is felt both within the body and mind. Often, troubling and distressing thoughts may repeat themselves over and over again, feelings of worry and dread can be constant, and you worry about the fact that you worry so much. Anxiety is often an imbalanced reaction to the stress of life or anticipated stress.
While stress is a normal occurrence, when it is prolonged (over many months to years), it starts to have damaging effects on the body and mind. Experiencing stress for an extended period can lead to seeing changes such as difficulty with sleep, “spacing out” (dissociation), irritability, fatigue, sense of helplessness, headaches, and digestive problems
Understanding the connection between stress, anxiety, nervous system dysregulation, the the gut is crucial for healing. Chronic stress or anxiety can lead to an overactive sympathetic nervous system ("fight, flight, freeze"), impaired parasympathetic function, and digestive system issues. An integrative mental health approach addresses both the anxiety felt in the body and reduce the thoughts that fuel dread and worry. Let’s get you relief from stress and anxiety so it doesn't take over how you function in life.
Depression Therapy
Depression is more than feeling sad. In addition to sadness, you may experience loss of interest in things you once found enjoyable, feelings of emptiness or hopelessness, extremely low energy, sleeping too little or too much, changes in your eating pattern, guilt or regret, difficulty with concentration, and in some cases, recurrent thoughts of suicide. Depression can be episodic or constant, but there is always help. Therapy can help break the cycle of depression so you can find enjoyment in your life again.
Existential Dread Therapy
Do you ever look up at the stars and wonder about your place in this universe? Have you previously made sense of your life through the lens of faith or another set of core beliefs and values, and now you aren’t sure anymore? Have your values or belief system been tested recently or failed, and you are unsure of what this means moving forward? Do you ever think about whether your life has meaning and purpose, only to begin having negative thoughts and experiencing a sense of being overwhelmed or stuck? Does thinking about death and its inevitability make you uncomfortable, distressed or confused? If you find that these kinds of existential thoughts have become overwhelming for you and are impacting your life and relationships, therapy can provide you the space and tools to understand the complexity of your emotions, evaluate your values and regain a sense of purpose and meaning in your life.
Grief and Loss Therapy
When we experience the death of someone we love, our whole world may feel like it has turned upside down. We experience despair, devastation, and anger. We feel that life will never be the same again. There is no right way to grieve. Grief, like waves in the ocean, rises and falls throughout our lifetime. In the initial stages right after losing someone, those waves can crash with greater intensity. We may be okay one day, then be racked with disbelief or despair the next. If you have lost a loved one, whether recent or long ago, and are struggling to cope with that loss, you are not alone. Therapy can help you navigate the change in the connection you shared with your loved one. Grief doesn't have to consume your whole world.
Life Transitions Therapy
Adjusting to change can be both rewarding and difficult. Over the course a lifetime, we can expect to experience a lot of changes. Changes can come in all forms, whether it's starting a new job or school, changes in values and dreams, changes in family and relationship dynamics, changes in sexuality and gender identification, or changes in lifestyle and health. All changes, whether we perceive them positive or negative, come with the need to adapt to new circumstances. There are some changes/transitions in life that can sometimes cause stress, feelings of being overwhelmed, anxiousness, feelings of depression, or changes in eating, sleeping or socialization habits. If you are currently struggling to cope with a life transition, therapy can provide a space for support and guidance on mindfully navigating the change and your experience through it.
Integrative Mental Health Care
Integrative mental health care approaches acknowledge that mental health can be influenced by a variety of factors such as nutrient imbalances, inflammation, socio-economic stressors, and behavioral habits. Our mental health struggles don't occur in a vacuum. How we feel is interconnected with the workings of the body and our individual biochemical needs. More studies are showing the connection between the gut's microbiome (referred to as "the second brain"), the nervous system, neurotransmitters involved with regulating mood, and immune system responses. This gut-brain axis influences mood, cognition, and mental wellbeing.
Each one of us has a complex and unique biochemistry. You will find the nutrition and lifestyle choices that help one person’s mental health may not be as effective for another. It's not a one-size-fits-all method. It can be valuable to create more awareness for yourself of any nutrient deficiencies, digestive system responses, inflammatory responses and other factors that impact your mood and overall mental health so you can make informed decisions everyday in your life and take more control of how you feel.
Trauma Therapy
There are traumatic events that are life threatening, such as being directly exposed to natural disasters, war, violence and abuse. These traumatic events can lead to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). There are also highly distressing experiences that may not be life threatening but still impact us, such as being a child of divorce/separation, poverty, living in communities with high exposure to violence, all the forms of oppression (racism, xenophobia, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, classism etc), emotional abuse, the loss of a relationship, experience of emotional or physical neglect during childhood and bullying to name a few. Each individual reacts to and copes differently to complex or single incident trauma and adversity.
You may find that you have been exposed to one or more traumatic events or experiences of adversity that continues to cause you distress or is impacting your relationship with others. Some common but not exhaustive list of reactions from trauma and adversity are anger or irritability, mood swings, withdrawing from others, feeling disconnected or numb, anxiety or fear, sadness, hopelessness, guilt, shame, always feeling on edge, nightmares, muscle tension, and negative feelings about yourself, your future, or the world.
Therapy for trauma and adversity at CreateWellness is focused on being non re-traumatizing and healing using memory reconsolidation theory on how the brain navigates, processes, and stores complex and troubling experiences from trauma. Trauma and adversity does not need to continue to harmfully impact your life and keep you stuck. The goal is to achieve lasting healing so you can live a more resilient and fulfilling life.
Depresson
Anxiety
Specialties Expanded
Integrative Mental Health
Trauma
Adversity
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