The second most common challenge that I have worked with as a therapist has been anxiety. This is natural given the majority of the people I work with have experienced significant amounts of trauma in their life. I have worked with people with various forms of OCD, Social Anxiety, and Generalized Anxiety Disorder. I have developed a broad toolbox to help people develop a new relationship with their anxiety while also practicing self-care of the body and nervous system.
The vast majority of the people I have worked with have had past trauma affecting their being stuck in unhealthy patterns. In many cases, the unhealthy behavior, such as an addiction, is just a natural response to the person trying to figure out how to cope with the overwhelming fear of some form of the trauma happening again. I generally first use mindfulness to help people to increase awareness of trauma patterns and then use combinations of somatic work and EMDR to resolve trauma in the body.
As an Couples therapist who uses Imago, I work to help couples find the understanding they crave. My training has included doing Imago work with my wife for the past 10 years. The general goal in Imago work is to help you, the couple, see how your "Image"/ Imago is playing out past misunderstandings and discover how your relationship is the perfect opportunity to heal. Imago therapy has helped me to be able to point out relationship patterns to both my individual and couples clients.
A good portion of my Relational Therapy is informed by experience combined with the Imago lens. I have found that relationships are usually helpful crucibles for change and thus have learned how to use the therapy relationship as a part of that crucible. Practice has helped me to find that some of my personal stories are useful in pointing out patterns. It helps to demonstrate the humanness of our dilemmas in order to help a client see that their challenge is natural, given their situation.
My journey first started as an Imago client and I found the method so useful I found a group to train with. Imago theory uses the “unconscious image [Imago] of familiar love” to help map out why misunderstandings occur for the couple and how to use the relationship to change the pattern to one of understanding each other's perspective. It is simple but hard work. Imago respects that the conflict in the relationship is change trying to occur rather than malicious intent.
For me, Mindfulness-based Therapy begins with my own practice. I started in 1993 and have continued to explore the endless possibilities of applying mindfulness principles to daily life. At university, I focused on MBCT. Due to working with diverse populations, I have developed a strong ability to adapt the core mindfulness principles to each person I have worked with. No two client's practices look the same, although they rely on the same foundation of awareness, presence, and acceptance.