Therapy for Anxiety & Trauma Recovery in Danbury, CT
Get out of your head and back to your life.
Is it hard to make decisions? Do you find yourself thinking out every potential outcome before committing to a step forward?
Does this sound familiar?
The day to day tasks just keep building up and today’s to-do’s so often that the snowballing feels like an avalanche. You know that something has got to give, but you aren’t sure how to start.
Do you find yourself jumping from one stressor to the next, unsure of why that or that is stressing you out so much? Do you often hear “You are worrying too much” or “It isn’t that big of a deal”? Does the overthinking before an event leave you too tapped to actually enjoy the experiences?
Are you often questioning why you can’t just be “normal, like everyone else”?
Is more of your time focused on what you are doing wrong (or not getting to at all) than on how you spend your days?
Are you sick of dreading socializing and feeling uncomfortable in groups?
Do you struggle with feeling “good enough”? Even when you are successful or accomplish something, feeling that anticipated celebration doesn’t come through.
Learn how to prioritize “me-time” when there is no time.
Find your shine in the spotlight
How working with an Anxiety and Trauma specialist in Danbury, CT can help you?
When it comes to feeling confident in your skin, it is important to understand the many wounds you have experienced and the ways in which you have coped. Many times my clients come in wanting change, but find that they are struggling to break from negative patterns. It can be helpful to explore if these undesirable habits once allowed us to survive a previous stage in our life.
For example, some want to feel confident saying no, but find themselves complying to meet the needs of others and overextending themselves. Others may want to feel good in their body and eat without shame, but still count calories and track diet trends. Perhaps you feel like this at times, you know you want something different, but find that you are falling into old automations. In order to rewrite these old habits, we have to first understand where they came from, why they were needed, and how they previously benefited you. These protective coping strategies will not be overridden or changed if the mind does not find it to be safe or purposeful.
For this type of exploration, we will use a combination of compassionate inquiry, Cognitive-Behavioral analysis, and the Internal Family Systems model to build an understanding of who you are and how you have become. We will also spend time getting to know each other while building comfort and trust, so that sharing your story feels less clinical and more friendly. In other words, we will be creating a sense of emotional safety in our therapy sessions.
We will then outline how coping habits, adaptive or otherwise, have impacted your sense of self over time. Having rigid boundaries or people pleasing tendencies may have helped you when you were a teen, but adolescent strategies are not necessarily beneficial for adult problems.
Once we have identified what has been going on and why, we can then really focus on developing self-compassion. We learn a lot better when we are calm. When our inner critic takes the wheel, our fear center can become activated. When our fear is driving our decision making, healthy growth is difficult. If we are fearful, we are going to lean on protective coping, even if the coping strategy is outdated and no longer functional. The brain is meant to keep you alive, not happy. Building a sense of self-compassion and a practice of nurturing yourself is an integral part of the healing process. In order to drive your attention to more helpful ways of thinking, we will practice different mindfulness strategies and explore your current self-care practice.
Accepting your journey and the choices you have made along the way, allows you to release any lingering guilt and shame that harms the confidence that you need in order to build new patterns. Change, growth, and healing are all much more accessible at this stage.
FAQs about Trauma & Anxiety Work
If you have more questions have a look at the FAQ page or reach out.
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Every person benefits from nurturing relationships, therefore every person can benefit from therapy. We are all trained in evidenced based therapeutic practices that have been proved to lead to positive results. Recognizing the benefits you may receive from therapy can often require that you have a mindset shift in order to see those potential outcomes.
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The type of work we do at Cope & Calm requires consistency and we have an expectation of weekly attendance. A 50 minute window of practice can be beneficial, but is a small time commitment when compared to the amount of time outside the therapeutic space. In order to make progress, we need to meet at a weekly cadence. The length of our time together depends on the goals you want to work on, your openness in session, and fidelity to practice outside of session. Some of our clients meet with us in 6 week bursts twice a year, others have been with us for several years as their challenges change with their life transitions.
Most of our clients report some relief after the initial session when they feel connected to their therapist and have a few suggestions to consider.
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The primary indicator of therapeutic success is the strength of the relationship between the therapist and client. We are all highly skilled at creating connection and a sense of safety in our therapy sessions both in-person and virtually.
I will admit that when I was in my training I did not think that I would ever provide virtual sessions. However, 2020 challenged that belief, and I am so glad that it did! I love that I get to see my clients in their personal spaces. Not only is it more convenient for them and removes a barrier to consistency in treatment, but it also allows clients to get vulnerable in the safety of their home and provides additional context for the therapist that was never available before.
How Trauma Therapy in Danbury, Connecticut can help you:
Imagine having the confidence to assert boundaries without feeling compelled to over explain or justify your decisions.
Do you remember having a teacher who held you to a high standard, but redirected you in a respectful and affirming way? Imaging being able to respond that way to your inner critic. How would that change the way you move around the world?
Imagine feeling free to try new things and challenge yourself without fear of shame from imperfection.
You can learn how to approach daily challenges in a way that does not lead to chronic overwhelm.
It is possible to be ambitious and not burn out.
