Serious Mental Illness

In a world that fights for our time, attention, and health, it makes sense that we are seeing more incidences of mental health disorders. You don’t have to be defined by your diagnosis.

So you have a diagnosis…

The clients that I work with have good insight on what their diagnosis is and are ready to figure out how to live their lives with it. You understand that there is no quick fix and that managing this new normal is going to take work. I want to help you find strategies that are authentic to you and help improve daily functioning, enhance efficacy at work, and manage relationships in a way that honors your partners, friends, and coworkers.

You think you might have a diagnosis…

Let’s chat! I like to explore with clients what it would mean to have a diagnosis and how that would affect their lives. Sometimes a depressed mood is just a depressed mood, sometimes it’s depression. Sometimes anxious feelings are a sign of underlying anxiety, sometimes it’s just the coffee. It’s hard to diagnose someone without processing lifestyle factors and past experiences. I like to engage with clients about their experiences of symptoms and talk through disordered experiences vs distressing experiences. If after some time together we find that there is a diagnosis, we’ll work through symptom management and get you connected to appropriate providers if you require more than psychotherapy.

How crazy are we talking here?

Many of my clients have reclaimed the word “crazy” because they are likening themselves to the geniuses that notoriously were also called “crazy.” So here are some examples of the types of clients I see:

Gifted individuals have brains that operate very differently than their peers and can be a source of isolation, shame, and distress. If you were ever identified as gifted you probably experience emotions very deeply and find that you are often misunderstood. Your problem isn’t that you don’t know your problems, but that you’re so acutely self-aware that you’re frustrated others are not and therefore don’t understand you. No, this isn’t technically a serious mental illness, but I’ve found that this is a common theme with the clients I work with that are showing symptoms of another diagnosis.

Bipolar Disorder can be scary, especially the first manic episode. You can’t seem to trust your instincts anymore because you worry that they’ll lead you down another path of impulsivity. You worry about when your next  high or low season will come and it keeps you from enjoying your life now. Managing stress is harder than ever, you think you’re losing your mind. We’ll talk a lot about lifestyle factors to keep you stable, coping mechanisms to get you through depressive episodes, and managing energy and impulses when you’re experiencing mania.

Pscyhosis can definitely put a damper on your everyday life. You may experience episodes of psychosis and need help managing the distress that follows. You may have consistent delusions and/or hallucinations that are causing chaos in your life. My goal is to facilitate your learning to manage the distress and figure out the most appropriate ways to engage or not engage so that your daily functioning isn’t impaired.

Dissociative features are actually more common and less recognized. Our survival mechanisms in the brain will get us through by any means necessary. This is why many people dissociate and compartmentalize their experiences and pieces of their personalities. While dissociation isn’t altogether bad, when it becomes disordered the therapeutic relationship can be the best place to facilitate growth and presence.

Personality disorders can come in a variety of forms. I believe that many are the effect of the earliest experiences and can be managed through ongoing psychotherapy. My goal is never to fix someone’s personality, rather to facilitate the expression of a personality that is authentic to you. Unfortunately, many of the people in our lives aren’t able to engage honestly with us about how we are affecting them but I’m here to create a safe space for you to experience yourself and facilitate healing where healing is needed.