Services
Services
I provide Individual and Couples Therapy. I can help with Depression, Anxiety, Addiction, PTSD, Bipolar, and Schizophrenia. I’ve been serving Carencro, Opelousas, Lafayette, Breaux Bridge and surrounding areas since 2019. Self pay rates are on a sliding scale ranging from $100-$150. I accept BC/BS insurance and I’m approved with Tricare out of network. I’m Licensed with the Louisiana State Board of Licensed Professional Counselors.
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I am trained in EMDR therapy, which stands for Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing. Here is a metaphor I like to use to explain trauma. Imagine that a tree falls in a river and is stuck, the tree is going to change the path of the water and create turbulence. A second tree falls and there is another change in the waters path with more turbulence, then a third, and a fourth. When enough trees fall a dam is created and there is no longer a path for the water to travel.
Metaphorically speaking the part of of us that experienced the trauma is disconnected from our rational or wise mind. There is a dam between the two sides. The process of EMDR is to identify the negative beliefs that are attached to these fallen trees/traumas, Identify a preferred belief, and remove the trees/desensitize the trauma, and allow the brain to heal and come to know that the preferred belief is true. “I am not enough” is a common negative belief and “I am good enough” is an example of a preferred belief. The goal is to get rid of the physiological response, nightmares, and old beliefs about one’s self and replace the old beliefs with new more accurate beliefs.
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Anxiety has both physical components and mental components. The physical components such as an increased heart rate, increased breathing rate, shortness of breath, sweating, and fatigue can be lessened by controlled breathing, deep breathing, and concentrating of the senses can help with this aspect of anxiety. Slowing down of one’s breathing communicates to the body that it is safe, the fast breathing communicates to the body that there is danger, which is most likely stress, fear, and/or worry. The concentration on breathing or in the senses takes the attention away from the fear, stress, and worry which is causing physiological responses.
The mental aspects of anxiety or mostly fear, worry, stress, and a combination of the three. One way to explore fears is to identify the fears, thinking errors, and notice the extra or obsessive attention giving to fear. Another way to deal with fear is to face it, which can be done by actually facing the fear, doing a guided exercise to mentally face the fear, and we can desensitize the fear using EMDR techniques.
We can deal with worry and stress by using the mindfulness skills similar to the ones used with the physical components. Stress and worry is thinking about the future and the past, there isn’t necessarily anything wrong with looking into the past or future, but when it causes worry and stress that is problematic. Coming back to the present moment can decrease worry and stress, then we will start to worry and come back to moment, worry and come back to the moment. The practice of coming back to the present moment, will help to lessen the time spent worrying and stressing. This alone may not get rid of stress and worry, but can help lessen it. We can also learn to recognize and change unhealthy thinking patterns that add to worry and stress.
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I believe with starting where you at, there are different paths and different definitions of what recovery is. For one person recovery may mean abstinence from all mind altering chemicals, for another person it may mean staying off of hard drugs or their drug of choice. I believe the individual has to be convinced that they can not use a particular substance in order to stay off of it and I don’t see it as my responsibility to convince anyone they have a problem with a particular substance, I may point out consequences or inconsistencies, but I think its up to the individual decide if a substance is problematic. I am familiar with the twelve step programs and can work within a 12 step context, I also have experience operating from a harm reduction frame work.