Relationships
When experiencing pain or confusion in relationships, it can seem difficult to sort out what you can influence from what you cannot in that relationship. Therapy can help guide you through gaining clarity about what you can and cannot change. Then the focus becomes goal setting around those areas that you can influence to improve your own coping, communication, boundaries, and ways of responding differently.
Motherhood
Whether adjusting to becoming a new mother or to the changing relationship as your child enters new life stages of adolescence, young adulthood, and adulthood, therapy can be quite valuable in identifying challenging patterns, offering new tools (boundary setting, communication, self-care attention), and inspiring self-insights to nurture an authentic, life-giving relationship. At times, mothers can become stuck in feelings of guilt or confusion and need guidance in understanding the source of those feelings and how to begin a new cycle of relating to yourself and your expectations as a mother.
Daughterhood
The mother/daughter relationship is a powerful one and at certain junctions of life, the relationship can have a powerful influence over daughters. You may be encountering new struggles or changes in the relationship with your mother or struggling with old, life-draining beliefs about your value reflected to you in that relationship. Sometimes daughters need to grieve for the relationship they never had with their mothers. Therapy provides an opportunity to share your history, grieve losses, identify new responses, and gain peace in newfound acceptance of yourself and your mother.
Career
A career can offer real fulfillment and add to a feeling of contribution to the world. When work is consistently life-draining and unfulfilling you can be left with questions of what is at the source your dissatisfaction.Therapy can also be beneficial if encountering difficult co-worker relationships, sexual harassment, or signs of burn-out. Signs of burnout can include lack of energy, increased irritability towards co-workers, lack of satisfaction in achievements, change in sleep and appetite, unexplained headaches, backaches or other physical complaints. Therapy can help illicit insights into the source/s of burnout including issues of unclear job expectations, mismatched values, extreme activity, and
poor job fit.
Retirement
A sense of identity is often linked to what you do and when a career comes to an end you can be left with new questions of life purpose and value. Therapy offers the opportunity to reflect on your career history, grieve any losses with its end, and explore your gifts and strengths as you cast a new vision for yourself in what a life-giving life looks like without your career and with the time to fill with what is most meaningful to you.
Caregiver Stress
When caregivers attend to others needs to such a degree that they neglect their own social, emotional, physical, and spiritual needs, it heightens stress, exhaustion, and feelings of irritability. Therapy can help guide insights into the source of your life draining patterns of caregiving including role confusion, unrealistic expectations, unreasonable demands, and lack of boundary setting. With those insights, goals are developed to work towards clarification of your caregiving role and to identify and live out a balance of meeting your own needs with those of others.
Divorce
Divorce can be an extremely painful and consuming loss and transition. At times the pain can seem intensely overwhelming and therapy provides a space to honor those feelings and move through them. Whether adjusting to being a single parent, managing new aspects of life, or navigating the dating world again, therapy can help you connect with your internal strength and resources in facing new experiences and challenges.
Alcohol Abuse
Alcohol abuse is now the third-leading cause of death and disability in the world as reported by the World Health Organization. Grandmothers, mothers, daughters, sisters, and wives are not immune. While women are aided by a culture that glamorizes alcohol use, the realities of alcohol abuse are devoid of any glamour. Acute alcohol abuse leads to higher risk of breast cancer, cardiovascular problems, reduces brain function and increases women’s vulnerability to be victims of violence and to have a shortened life-span.
Problem drinking has multiple causes, with genetic, physiological, psychological and social factors all playing a role. For some alcohol abusers, psychological traits such as impulsiveness, low self-esteem and the need for approval prompt excessive drinking. Others drink as a way of coping with emotional pain and/or to medicate psychological disorders such as depression or anxiety. In actuality, heavy drinking can worsen existing conditions, such as depression and anxiety and induce new problems such as serious memory loss.
Psychotherapy can help you address psychological issues involved in your drinking. Therapy goals are developed to help you identify situations that trigger drinking and learn new coping methods. Referrals to self-help groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous, a crucial part of any recovery program, can also be made in therapy. Prospects for long-term recovery are favorable for people who seek help from appropriate sources.
Spiritual Exploration
Painful emotions and life circumstances can be opportunities to attend to your whole being- your body, mind, and spirit in a new way with newfound attentiveness. If desired, goals can include finding pathways for spiritual growth and nurturance through exploring how you may be currently nurturing your spirit and how you have in your past. Depending on your unique way of experiencing spiritual nurturance and support, new pathways for spiritual connection and growth can be introduced, such as guided imagery, meditation, mindfulness techniques, centering prayer, breath prayer, and/or enneagram (personality inventory) exploration to build on your foundation of spiritual practices and tools wherever you are currently at.