Many people begin their search for therapy on large online platforms such as Alma, Headspace, Rula, BetterHelp, Talkspace, Grow Therapy, or other online therapy directories. These platforms can be helpful starting points because they make therapy feel more searchable and accessible. Alma describes its service as helping people find in-network care and the right therapist …
Telehealth Mental Health Services in Oregon: Accessible Care for Depression, Anxiety, and Positive Change
Accessing mental health care in Oregon has become easier, more flexible, and more convenient through telehealth. Whether you live in Portland, Eugene, Bend, Salem, Medford, the Oregon Coast, or a rural community in Eastern Oregon, telehealth can make high-quality mental health treatment available without the need to commute, sit in waiting rooms, or rearrange your …
Primary Emotions Series: Anger
In this next series of blogs, I am going to write about our six primary emotions and how they present themselves in therapy. This research comes from Paul Ekman who identified six basic emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise) all humans have. These may sound familiar because there is a wonderful movie, Inside Out, in which the …
Where Shame Lives
Shame is one of those words that elicits a strong visceral reaction from our body and mind. Probably just reading that one word you may have noticed yourself wanting to stop reading this blog (avoidance) or your stomach cringing (psychosomatic symptom expression). Shame is often associated with feelings and emotions we try to block from …
Both Sides of the Couch
What makes therapy difficult for so many people is this idea that you have to share some of your deepest and darkest secrets to a complete stranger. As someone who has sat both in the chair as the therapist and on the couch as the patient, I can tell you that I sincerely empathize with …
Types of Therapy
For some, going to therapy or counseling is an intimidating, and at times, scary process. We all have schemas of what a therapist’s office looks like or how he or she will act in the first initial encounter. One can imagine that there will be a bookshelf with lots of books on it; perhaps a …
Empathy that Cures
One of the key factors in any successful therapeutic relationship is the ability for the therapist to understand the patient; it is only then authentic safety and healing can occur. Regardless of one’s theoretical orientation or how one comes to understand psychopathology, this key ingredient makes the treatment effective. To gain a better understand of …
The First Session
Psychotherapy has come a long way in relation to restoring one’s humanity and the overall goal of improving one’s person life. From Freud who emphasized unconscious drives related to sex and death to the mindfulness movement that focuses on the here and now of the patient’s experience. Regardless of a clinician’s theoretical background or way …
Discover What you are Hiding From.
It is embedded in humans that we protect ourselves from both internal and external threats to our homeostatic state. This can be our immune system fighting off a disease or can be a painful memory that we do not think about. People who come to therapy are often looking to relieve a certain type of …