Bilingual Therapist (Spanish/English)
Virtual, individual therapy for adults in Maryland.
Areas of Expertise
I offer individual, virtual therapy in English and Spanish with adults (18+) located in the state of Maryland. I believe that we are so much more than our diagnoses and symptoms. However, for the sake of ease of understanding, below are brief descriptions of my areas of focus.
Anxiety & Depression
I have ample experience treating a range of anxiety and depressive/mood disorders. In short, I see anxiety and depression as dysregulated nervous system states. In response to our trauma, our systems default to a tense, frantic, fearful, hyper-vigilant mode (anxiety) or a heavy, dark, listless, shut-down, numb state (depression). Sometimes we toggle between the two.
I believe anxiety is the result of our scared, traumatized parts "leaking" through in our daily lives, desperately asking for our love and attention. And/or, our anxious protector parts worry and tense in frantic attempts to bring a semblance of control and safety to our scared systems.
Depressive symptoms, on the other hand, result from a disconnection with your authentic self. As a result of what happened to you, the real you has been forced to depress, hide away, stay small. And/or, several common protector parts lead to depressive energy: a numbing part attempting to keep overwhelming feelings at bay. A strong self-critic beating you up all day long in a frantic effort to "improve" your life, or a people-pleasing part relentlessly putting others' needs before yours as a desperate attempt to feel loved. All good intentions with an unfortunate outcome: persistent feelings of sadness, numbness, invisibility, nothingness, meaninglessness, aka, depression.
My approach to these "disorders"--and the many not mentioned here--is to guide you in connecting with these symptoms, getting to know them and appreciate them, and offering them the love and healing they need to release their extreme roles and burdens that bring you suffering.
Chronic Pain
I am a certified Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT) clinician and a chronic pain survivor. I recovered from 10 years of chronic hip, lower back and pelvic pain using a combination of Internal Family Systems (IFS) and PRT.
As trauma specialist Bessel Van der Kolk says, "our bodies keep the score." Our minds, bodies and emotions are inextricably linked. Our emotional trauma shows up as physical pain and dis-ease. Our traumatized nervous systems get "stuck" in a state of high-alert, which causes our brains to interpret normal sensations from our bodies as dangerous. Thinking we're in danger, our brains send pain signals in an attempt to protect us. We then learn to fear the pain, which causes our nervous systems to perceive more threat, and our brains send more pain signals. We are now stuck in a nasty pain-fear cycle, often for years or even decades. We stop doing things we love, our relationships suffer, and our very identities become linked with the pain ("My body is broken. I am broken. I am weak.") We often fall into depressive states.
And, it's all heal-able. You have the power to re-wire you brain into a state of safety and turn off those pain signals. I did it and you can too.
Trauma
All the work I do is trauma-informed. I am a Certified Trauma Therapist. I see trauma as a deep rupture to our natural desire and ability to connect--with ourselves and others--and live with joy. Trauma brings chaos to our nervous systems, rewires our brains, and leads to chronic pain and chronic health conditions. And, it is absolutely heal-able. You are so much more than what happened to you. You are not broken; you are traumatized. You are not bad; bad things happened to you. You are worthy of healing, connection and love.
While I have experience treating the range of "Big T" and "little t" traumas, I consider myself particularly skilled in treating emotional neglect. Many traumatic experiences are awful things that happened to you. They are intrusive acts of aggression and violation. Emotional neglect is what didn't happen. They are acts of omission. Emotional neglect is a consistent lack of attention to your emotional needs, a failure by your care-takers to attend to your emotional life. While your upbringing and current life may seem "normal," you may experience anxiety and depression, and your life perhaps doesn't feel quite fulfilling. The "quiet" trauma of emotional neglect is real and painful. Coming home to yourSelf and becoming the source of connection, affection, mirroring and love you lacked as a child is absolutely possible.