Therapeutic Approaches

Psychodynamic Techniques

Psychodynamic therapy (also known as insight therapy) focuses on unconscious (unknown) processes and how it manifests in a person’s present day life through decisions, behaviors, thoughts and dreams. Psychodynamic therapy increases self-awareness, examines unresolved past and present conflicts (family/work/relationships/self), and contributes to a deep understanding of how one’s past experiences can lead to a life filled with unintended choices and unsatisfying relationships.  Working with a professional who is empathic, thoughtful, and reliably attuned offers a place for reflection, insight and healing.  Research confirms what many therapists and clients have known for a long time, namely that the therapeutic approaches and relationship between therapist and client is one of the strongest predictors of therapeutic outcome.

Mindfulness Awareness & Somatic Experiencing

Current research shows the effectiveness of mindfulness meditation for reducing symptoms of depression, anxiety, pain and trauma.  It also improves people’s ability to tolerate their emotions, however unpleasant, thus changing their experience of themselves and their ability to control the expression of their sensations/feelings.

Somatic Therapy emphasizes the role of the body in the expression of emotions and symptoms and looks at the ways the body holds onto memories/experiences.  Somatic therapies bring the body into the room.  Trauma research (Van Der Kolk, MD, Peter Levine, Ph.D.) elucidate the ways in which the body gives access to unspoken, painful, or hidden experiences/memories that cannot be known or illuminated by “insight” therapy alone.

EMDR Therapy

Attachment Focused, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is an integrative and powerful therapeutic approach that has been well-researched and proven effective for its use in the treatment of trauma/PTSD (past or recent traumas). Additionally, AF-EMDR is used for people who struggle with addictions, phobias, anxiety and depression.  AF-EMDR rapidly processes information such that memories, thoughts, feelings, fantasy images and body sensations move along an adaptive path and returns the person to a state of equilibrium, new insights and integration. Old ways of understanding experiences along with the negative beliefs about yourself get stuck in the nervous system, a kind of “narrow lens” that limits how you interpret relationship interactions and life experiences including how you feel about yourself.   EMDR helps to reduce or eliminate the emotional charge attached to upsetting incidents and memories held in the mind-body creating measurable changes in the emotional centers of the brain (amygdala to hippocampus connection) as well as in the nervous system.  The theory and practice of EMDR is predicated on the principle that basic health and held truths reside within us all.

You can visit my profile on the EMDRIA website (EMDRIA Tracy Artson, Ph.D.).

Please feel free to Contact Me directly with any questions and to schedule an appointment.