A main objective in ACT is to get back into the life one wants to live by focusing on core values and having more meaningful experiences. Mindfulness and acceptance skills are applied to troubling thoughts and emotions. Emotions and thoughts are considered as internal experiences that can be observed with willingness rather than to struggle against. ACT works to enhance psychological flexibility through six core processes: contacting the present moment, defusion from troubling thoughts and feelings, acceptance, self-as-context, values, and committed action.

Based on solid behavioral science, exposure therapy takes several forms for different purposes. Avoidance of the people, places, and things that make one anxious fans the flames of the anxiety. By starting easy and working up to more difficult tasks, clients are empowered to willingly approach the activities they have been avoiding because of anxiety. Opening to the experience of fear and approaching these situations helps the body recognize false alarms of danger and recalibrate an overactive fight or flight response.

I provide the following types of Exposure therapies: Exposure and Response Prevention for OCD, Interoceptive Cue Exposure for Panic, Prolonged Exposure for PTSD, Social Exposures for Social Anxiety Disorder, and Exposures for phobias.

Trauma does not always need to be revisited, but sometimes discussing the details of such an event in therapy is necessary. This is especially true for clients suffering from nightmares, flashbacks, and intrusive memories of a traumatic event. If we think about disturbing traumatic memories as objects we stuff in a closet. Sometimes the closet is so full and cluttered that the door cannot be closed. Whenever we are reminded of trauma the door gets bumped and clothes and objects spill out. This leads to frantically trying to stuff the objects back in, and hopelessly guarding the door to make sure they do not spill out again. With PE, we do not try to get rid of these objects. Instead, we work to organize the closet so the objects do not spill out. In addition to this, we learn calming techniques and start doing the activities and goals we care about.

Instead of digging up trauma, sometimes the beliefs about ourselves, the world, and others that are formed following a traumatic event may need to be examined. Some of these beliefs may be preventing the natural recovery from trauma, these are called stuck points. What this can look like are beliefs such as “I am broken and too damaged to recover,” “no one can be trusted,” and many others. With CPT we work to identify stuck points like these in different aspects of life such as safety, trust, power, control, esteem, and intimacy. We then work to challenge these stuck points and rework them into beliefs that are more helpful and less rigid.