Specializing in the Treatment of Trauma and Anxiety in Christian Women
Invest in your relationship with yourself
As an intelligent and high-achieving Christian Woman considering counseling therapy, you probably have a tendency to put others first, put your own needs to the side, and hope that praying for change will miraculously make your internal pain, struggles, and mental gymnastics instantly disappear someday.
However, while God can work that way, He isn’t a genie in a bottle but a God who LOVES YOU! He cares about your innermost being getting the care that it needs. He knows that others are important but that YOU ARE TOO! Perhaps, the frustration you are experiencing is the exact means by which God wants you to trust His plan for your healing journey, and part of the healing work is learning that you are loved, matter, and cared about, too.
In fact, when you heal, you are more impactful to serve Him and others, and when you don’t take the time to address the uncomfortable reality of what isn’t working for you, you shortchange yourself, others, and God of the beauty and power of healthy Christian womanhood. It does exist.
How do I know? I know it is possible because I help Christian Women just like you everyday, and I used to be one of the Christian women who prayed and prayed and felt like maybe I didn’t have enough faith for things to change. That wasn’t the truth.
The truth was that I had unaddressed trauma, unaddressed needs, and I needed mental, emotional, and physical healing to get my whole being in alignment with the FREEDOM Jesus already provided for me. I had to learn to take the uncomfortable first steps to trust the process and heal the way God made us to heal, through relationship, needs meeting, grace, compassion, and good, solid mental health care.
If you are done with the years of hoping and trying for change but not really getting any tangible results, it’s time for deep trauma-informed therapy with a Christian provider.
You may think that your experience is not “bad” enough to qualify as “trauma.” However, there are all kinds of trauma, and each person experiences it. Trauma simply means you have been wounded, hurt, let-down, and that your coping ability and/or supports were not able to handle the intensity of the things that caused the pain. Together, we will look at how you strategized to survive your experiences and how they help you vs. how they are not getting in your way.
We will welcome them to tell the story of your experience, and we will work to uncover the unmet needs you still struggle to have met.
Get ready to experience therapy in a completely different way than any only talk-therapy could do. Here, we help you get to the root of the issue so that you can finally break free from what’s holding you back.
GOOD - Traditional Weekly Therapy
Pros - Support as things come up in every day life between sessions.
Trust built over time with the therapist.
Processing and Skills Building at a slower, more predictable pace.
Can use insurance to cover weekly sessions if the therapist is in network with your insurance.
Cons- Can take an average of 2-4 years for the deepest trauma healing.
Weekly scheduling inconveniences, babysitting costs, limited appointment spots available
Constantly needing to prepare for therapy sessions and “opening up” the tender places, and just when you feel “in the zone,” the session needs to start moving towards closing down the process, waiting until next week.
Not the most efficient for time, money, and healing results.
Effective, but longer in duration overall.
Insurance coverage can impact what qualifies and what is covered rather than your needs leading the way.
BETTER - EMDR Therapy
Pros - This is great for deep healing of things you have not been able to get past with “thinking better thoughts,” “trying harder,” or addressing in traditional “talk therapy,” Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) by a Trained and Certified EMDR Therapist who also understands and respects the nuances of your faith walk and spiritual journey can make all the difference.
Specific targeted areas of pain, suffering, or stuckness are selected together, and your nervous system, body, brain, and feelings can work together with your spirit to have informed connections made and effective processing of problematic areas resolved.
Trauma wounds are able to be addressed in a way that does not flood your system, that honors the “Story” of your experiences and how they impacted you, and are able to be connected to resources that you already have or build in session to soothe the disturbed parts of self.
EMDR is very effective for one-off traumas such as accidents or set-backs, as well as for chronic traumas such as abuse in childhood, neglect, or ongoing pain.
Cons- EMDR is effective weekly, but at its best when the client can delve as deeply as their system is ready for at the time of the therapy session, and insurance often caps sessions at 53 minutes in duration. So, EMDR weekly must fall into those constraints.
BEST - ECLECTIC EMDR THERAPY INTENSIVES
Pros - This model of therapy allows for clients to heal deeper and faster as it provides several hours of concentrated time set-aside specifically for the individual client’s needs.
The client can be attuned to by the therapist with the luxury of time to do the deep work as it reveals itself through the processing rather than “stuffing it into a container” to be held until the next weekly session.
Fewer sessions will likely be needed overall
Dedicated time just for you to be able to have your mental, emotional, physical, spiritual, and tools and resource needs addressed immediately without having to close everything up and carry it on your own between sessions.
You may select as many hours of therapy as you desire and chunk the hours into blocks of time that work for you.
Intensives provide deeper healing faster.
Cons - Not billable to insurance
Higher upfront investment
As with all therapy, there may be need for further treatment or sessions as there are no guarantees that all identified targets will be able to be cleared.
Recommendations found on the Web:
“Michelle is an absolutely wonderful person and counselor. If you are looking for a counselor who is patient, understanding, empathetic, kind, empowering, and genuine, Michelle is your gal. I recommend her to everyone I know!”