Empower Your Journey to Wellness

Q: What do you really want from counseling? Honestly, don't you just want to ease your pain, stop the suffering, end your struggles, and arrive somewhere better? I understand that you may not care so much about therapeutic approaches, but maybe you will love the emotional release you can experience when you finish a counseling session. Maybe you will feel less burdened, seen, and not so alone. You might decide to come to therapy not because you love therapy, but because your motivated to get out of the darkness and love your life again. 

Even if you're in a different place, you're welcome to choose how I can help support your symptoms including depression, anxiety, relationship issues, bipolar disorder, eating disorders, personality disorders, self harm, suicidal ideation and more. 

 Q: What will we talk about? First of all, we will have to figure out what the problem is exactly. It can be easy sometimes to just start with symptoms you're having and go from there. Often therapy is a messy and painful process of feeling expression, problem solving, and learning new ideas for thinking and behavior. Maybe we can discuss using mindfulness, breathing, or grounding to help your body/mind connection. We will work to create a new narrative for you that reflects your healing, and growth. The work of therapy starts with receiving support, building trust and then seems to require a certain amount of courage, grit, and resolve. When your journey is over, and you have fresh confidence that you have what is takes to handle life's challenges, you get to enjoy a NEW YOU-stronger and more resilient and free to create a life worth living. Are you ready for this?

Q: Shouldn't I know about your training? Of course! Sometimes it just inspires confidence, so here goes... I operate with a Michigan state license in Clinical Social Work. I've been practicing since 2003 in a variety of settings including psychiatric hospitals, and community mental health. I started learning the ropes in private practice in 2014 and have been owner and operator of Breakthrough Counseling since 2017. I've been working hard to keep up with best practices and the latest training in mood disorders and trauma care. 

As a level 2 certified clinical trauma therapist, I use both body based and cognitive approaches to healing. Body awareness, grounding, pendulation, titration, sequencing, and resourcing are among the techniques that we can explore in somatic experiencing. Breath work and mindfulness are skills we can work to develop as well as skills for emotional regulation, distress tolerance, and interpersonal effectiveness. I am DBT certified and work to find the balance between release, coaching, and therapeutic connection. If this sounds like gibberish to you, most of all I just want you to know that I am committed to best practices and personal growth.

A study in the Journal of Counseling and Psychology found that most people feel better within 7-10 visits. In a different study published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, they found that 88% of people who experienced therapy reported improvements after just one session. Isn't that amazing? Whether you benefit from 1 or 100 sessions, what do you have to lose? I would love to meet you so we can find out what it will take so that you can feel better and begin to live the life you want. 

If you're eating or sleeping more than usual, withdrawing from family or friends, or just feeling "off", counseling can help. Other reasons you might consider Breakthrough Counseling could be that you are using alcohol, drugs, food, or sex to cope; feeling like your emotions are out of control, you've lost someone or something important to you, something traumatic happened, or you just cant do the things you like.