What to Expect in Therapy
If you’ve never been to therapy before, it can seem like a process shrouded in mystery, causing many questions to pop into your head. You don’t know what to expect in therapy.
Does therapy require me to lie on a couch? Do you practice mind control while working with me? Will I cry all the time, or is there a secret handshake? (Answers: No, No, No, and No).
Therapy, while magical in its results, is relatively straightforward.
When you come to see me for therapy, in the first session we start with an assessment. I will ask you many nosy questions to understand what you have been through, what you tried – what worked and failed to work, and what factors are playing into the difficulties you have now.
We’ll talk about how you want your life to be different and what we will do to get that outcome.
About Therapy Assessment and Diagnosis
At the end of the assessment process, which lasts anywhere from one to three sessions, I’ll give you a mental health diagnosis. A diagnosis is just a name for the things you are experiencing that are causing you distress.
I don’t need to provide you with a diagnosis if you don’t want one, but there are practical considerations involved in a diagnosis. If you’re going to try to use your out of network benefits from your insurance company, you need a diagnosis.
Aside from practical considerations, some people find having a name for their symptoms is very helpful. A diagnosis can point you toward others who have gone through what you’re going through.
Having a diagnosis also provides you with more information about what has worked for others who have experienced similar problems and will help guide what to expect in therapy.
Then comes the growth…
Once we know what we are dealing with, we start working on your goals. You talk about what you need to talk about, and I help you figure out what that is. You might feel unsure what exactly you need to or would want to discuss. That’s okay. We can start with that.
The heart of our work together is to identify the emotional, behavioral, and physical patterns that are keeping you stuck. We want to understand what need these patterns meet and help you find alternative ways of meeting these needs.
Sometimes, we will work directly on the thoughts and behaviors that are playing into the problems and change them in that way. At other times, we will take more of a body-based approach to examine gently what emotions are present and what you need for healing, which sometimes involves using clinical hypnosis.
Clinical hypnosis is not what you think.
It is normal to not know what to expect in therapy using clinical hypnosis. Pretty much every movie you see gets hypnosis wrong. Hypnosis is not about mind control, and I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do.
Hypnosis is a way for us to use our subconscious mind’s power to create changes we want to make and encounter and process feelings in new ways.
Therapy Approaches for Trauma
Usually, we employ a combination of approaches in therapy. If PTSD is one of the main issues, or if you have a lot of distress about something that happened in the past, we will consider if Prolonged Exposure therapy or EMDR might help you put the memory of what happened to you behind you. Both EMDR and Prolonged Exposure are effective online, like the other forms of therapy I use.
Using the Wisdom of Bodily Sensations in Therapy
We will mainly pay attention to how your thoughts and feelings show up in your body and increase your ability to tolerate those feelings. Once you know on a visceral level that you don’t need to fear your emotions or pain, these sensations become less bothersome.
Many people with whom I work learn to embrace feelings as important information – as a way to tap into their internal wisdom and enhance their well-being, rather than detracting from it. They stop trying to ignore or push away their feelings and instead learn to use the experience of their bodies and minds to direct them toward choices that lead to better health and greater happiness.
About Me
Why do I do this work?
I became a therapist after I ran away from graduate school at Yale. I was in the Ph.D. program in German Literature. I had thought I wanted to be a professor of German literature. Two years into that process I realized I was miserable and knew I needed a change.
So I moved to the Twin Cities, got a job I wasn’t crazy about, and I started going to therapy. In therapy I learned to appreciate and honor my unique strengths and pay attention to my own needs rather than what I thought I ought to be doing.
At the time my differences were identified as “high sensitivity” and introversion (with a good dose of anxiety). I have since come to understand it as neurodivergence and the consequences of trying to make myself fit into a world that is not set up for my way of being in the world (no wonder there was anxiety!). My own neurodivergent traits have become especially clear since having my own neurodivergent kids.
While receiving therapy, I realized that what I enjoyed about studying literature had a lot in common with therapy. I love looking for patterns, underlying motivations, significant language, metaphor – and so, I went on to get my Masters in Social Work from the University of St. Thomas/College of St. Catherine School of Social Work in 2009. I worked in community mental health for a while, and then came to the work of chronic pain and trauma through my work as a psychotherapist at a medical spine clinic.
While I have dealt with chronic pain since I was a teenager (I was a pedestrian when I got hit by a car in a crosswalk. I bounced off the windshield and got several fun nicknames out of that one as a middle schooler), it wasn’t until I started learning clinical hypnosis that I truly understood how powerful the mind can be at changing one’s experience of pain.
When I started working with people with chronic pain, I learned how intertwined pain and trauma are. Practicing Prolonged Exposure and EMDR helped me see just how treatable PTSD can be. It is such an exciting part of my work to see people free themselves of the trauma they have carried for many years.
Life is not all about being a therapist.
When I am not a therapist, you will find me hanging out with my husband and three neurodivergent kids (I’m a mom of twins, by the way). We love going to museums (especially the Bell Museum and Science Museum of Minnesota), searching for the best doughnuts in town, and traveling to places near and far.
When I have some free time alone, I enjoy working on jigsaw puzzles, making crop art, converting my yard to native plantings, crocheting, reading and watching sci-fi, and working on DIY home decorating projects for my 139-year-old house.
Other Qualifications
I have been a Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker (LICSW) in Minnesota since 2012, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) in North Dakota since 2021, and a certified telehealth provider in Florida since 2023.
I have been a Diplomate in the Academy of Cognitive Therapy since 2014. I was also certified in Prolonged Exposure therapy for PTSD by the Center for the Study and Treatment of Anxiety in 2014.
I completed Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy training in 2017, and I have been certified in clinical hypnosis by the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis since 2019.
I hold a Bachelor of Arts from Grinnell College, a Master of Arts from Yale, and a Master of Social Work in Clinical Social Work from the College of St. Catherine/University of St. Thomas.
If you’d like to find out whether we can work well together, send me an email to set up your free 15-minute consultation. I’m excited to start working with you!