Austin Therapy for Women
Some areas of focus:
Relationship Challenges: I help you get to the root of the issues you are having in your relationships. It is so human for our closest relationships to bring up intensely strong emotions that are hard for us to make sense of, work through, or resolve. These emotions can take over us entirely and make it hard for us to change how we are responding to conflict, how we are communicating our needs, or setting the boundaries we know would be good for us.
Overwhelming Emotions: Dealing with strong emotions that come on quickly or unexpectedly can be confusing and overwhelming. They catch us off guard and we don’t always understand where they are coming from. I help you make sense of these strong emotions and give you a safe space to feel them so that they can lessen in their intensity. Together we will explore what these feelings are telling you about what you need at this moment in your life.
Building Traction in Relationships: The fear of not having the relationship (or family) we long for is very real and each year that passes, it can get more intense. Yet the relationships you have developed in your life have not ‘stuck.’ It’s been hard to build real traction in a relationship. What stands in the way? You may be in a place of healing from your last relationship or a place of wanting to do deeper work on how to show up differently to your next one. Together we get clear about what you want, what you need from a relationship, and help you become more aware of the unconscious patterns you are bringing into a relationship.
Anxiety can show up in many forms: perfectionism, chronic stress, staying busy, chasing other’s approvals, hypervigilance, people-pleasing, and feeling responsible for the well-being of others. Anxiety is a normal, human experience. We all have anxiety at certain points in our life. Our work together will be focused on helping you understand your anxiety, identify the ways it unconsciously runs your life, and helping you to build the tools for self-inquiry and self-soothing.
Clarity. Purpose. Truth. You don’t know what you want - or you are too scared to go for it. You need a space where you get drop in, get centered, and get clear about what you really want from your life and how you want to feel.
Emotional Patterns: We all have them. And as we age, they become even more obvious to us. The same “stuck” places, the same ruts, the same fears and anxieties that keep us frozen, and the same downward spirals. We may have the same patterns show up again and again in relationship. We make these conscious. We get to the root of them. We help you build in and reinforce new, empowered patterns in your life.
Childhood Experiences + Trauma: We know when it’s time for us to take deeper inventory of the experiences of our lives. To walk through the moments that really impacted us and to process them more fully. To understand how those experiences affect us even now and learn how to evolve beyond our history.
Daughters of Difficult Parental Relationships: After decades of chronic guilt myself, I help you establish healthy boundaries, find your voice in the relationship, work through guilt, and reduce your sense of responsibility for caretaking your parent. We will take focused steps on setting internal boundaries within the relationship and yourself. I also help you see your parents more clearly - to see how we can make the relationship more amenable and less hurtful - without the guilt or expectation that you take care of them or betray your own needs and feelings.
Motherhood: Motherhood presents many different phases and stages that can stir up strong feelings in us - whether we have a newborn or a teenager. There is no way we can arrive into any of these phases of motherhood fully prepared. Mothering will require growth on our part to meet the needs of our children as they present themselves. A growth mindset is fundamental -“I am here to grow alongside my child, to understand their needs, to understand my own needs, and to rise to meet them both.” I help you feel supported, and not alone, in the invitation (and overwhelm) that is motherhood.