The Presenting Issues Summer works with and her approach:

Maybe you recently had a bad car accident or witnessed a family member suffering in the hospital. Maybe you had a recent injury or a bad breakup from a toxic relationship. Any of these events can cause a person to experience trauma related symptoms such as, having flashbacks of the event, having a hard time not thinking about the event when not busy, feeling on edge or irritable, trouble sleeping, lost interest in pleasurable activities, or muscle tension (chest, neck shoulders, jaw, etc.). To address these symptoms is to address the trauma by getting comfortable talking about it, understanding how it has affected you, and accepting how it has changed you. It is also important to learn how to manage the symptoms and how to make adjustments in your life to easy any burdens or obstacles caused by the trauma. 

Anxiety is a natural symptom of life. However, when it gets unmanageable it can become debilitating. The primary goals in addressing anxiety are to increase mindfulness and calming skills. To do this we first work to increase self-awareness through monitoring. Then I will teach you cognitive and behavioral coping strategies to address anxious symptoms, while helping you work to address the underlying causes to your overall anxiety. Common underlying causes to anxiety may include, low self-esteem issues, low communication skills, low social skills, avoidant behaviors, trouble addressing conflict, and unresolved traumas. 

Feeling depressed does not mean you just feel sad. It often can mean you feel like you are missing something or that you are trapped in some way. Tackling depression may include: processing past traumas or recent troubling situations and finding ways to come to conclusions about them, increasing mindfulness of your body’s needs, addressing those needs, and learning cognitive and behavioral coping strategies to increase positive emotions and reduce depressive symptoms. 

Committed relationships require time, a lot of energy, and a significant amount of hard-work. As relationships grow in time, they change in all kinds of ways. This can lead couples down many paths of hardship that may cause them to seek help from a professional. Couples therapy is a great tool for couples to increase communication, identify goals, and determine the future of their relationship. In couples sessions, I work with the couple to identify their primary issues, uncover the roots to those problems, and work to address each root. We also work to increase respectful, assertive communication of wants, needs, likes, and dislikes within the relationship, identify boundaries within and outside the relationship, set expectations, and identify strategies to facilitate intimacy and mutual respect. 

Each family has it’s own system with it’s own culture, and will go through ups and downs and have ins and outs. During those downs and outs it’s nice to have a person on the outside of the family to help facilitate communication and brainstorm solutions to problems. My approach to family psychotherapy starts with helping the family define the problem(s), identify the underlying causes to those problems, and assist them with addressing those causes. 

Being a teenager is hard. Being a parent to a teenager is even harder. These are defining years for teens as they grow to become young adults, as well as, defining for the future of the parent-child relationship. As teens are trying to understand themselves and the world they live in, their parents are often just trying to keep the wheels on while trying to do what they think is best for their kids. This can make for a challenging few years for any family. I have worked with teens and families for the last 11 years in in-office outpatient, intensive in-home, and psychiatric residential facility settings . My goal with teens is to provide a safe place for them to express themselves, while teaching them skills to manage stress, conflict, and responsible decision-making. For the parents of these teens, the goals are to facilitate communication, assist with problem-solving, and provide a space for them to unload and work through the many challenges of parenting. 

Women have a lot of things to deal with that can be hard to talk about, even with other women. It can be hard to know who to talk to about women-specific medical issues, relationship issues, parenting issues, or issues in the work place. My goals are to offer a safe, nonjudgmental space for women to explore, express, and address these issues while alleviating stress and increasing self-awareness, self-esteem, and self-worth. 

When you are apart of the LGBTQ community, it is hard to know who to talk to about even the smallest of things. This is especially true in the south. I can offer a safe, nonjudgmental place for members of the LGBTQ community to address mental health needs related to anxiety, depression, trauma, family issues, relationship issues, bipolar disorders, and grief and loss. 

When someone first learns that they have tested positive with HIV there is a flood of emotions and none of them are of the happy variety. There will be so many things to figure out on how to manage HIV and what to expect medically, but there will also be many other things a person will be trying to figure out. How did I get it? Who can I talk to about it? Will anyone want me (friends, family, or lovers) now that I’m HIV positive? Am I a defected person now? These are hard questions to handle alone. My goal is to provide a safe place to explore and figure these things out without judgment. 

Addressing ADD/ADHD includes, trauma focused work with special attention to ages 0-5. ADD/ADHD is categorized as a neurodevelopment disorder, which means your developing brain was trying to overcompensate for the unpredictable, unsafe, and/or unnurtured living conditions during that time. Your brain grows the fastest it ever does in your life time between the ages 0-3 and is 90% developed by age 5. Therefore, we have to consider what was going on in your life during that stretch of development to understand how and why your brain operates the way it does now. Of course, any traumas after that time will need to be addressed, as well. Once we have an understanding of this, then we work to increase your relaxation skills, organizational skills, boundary setting and building skills, mindfulness practice, and cognitive and behavioral proactive and reactive coping skills. 

The aim in treating bipolar disorder is first to gain acceptance of your body’s response to everyday life stressors. Then gain as much awareness of your triggers, drivers, and bodily sensations around your cycles of depression, anxiety, and mania. Next, we work to increase your cognitive and behavioral proactive and reactive coping skills, problem-solving skills, conflict resolution skills, communication skills, boundary setting and building skills, and prevention planning skills to support your bodies response to stress. This often includes addressing your trauma history, as well as your present life issues. 

In my experience working with BPD over the last 13 years, I have found that BPD is actually complex PTSD that developed from repeatedly experiencing childhood neglect, abuse, and/or parentification of their primary caregiver(s). Due to the insecure and often codependent relationship dynamic that the parent has modeled for and with the child, the child grows up to significantly struggle in relationships in most areas of their life. This leads to the presentation of symptoms that are currently labeled as BPD in the DSM-5. In order to successful treat BPD, I have found trauma-focused treatment is a must, along with teaching mindfulness practice, skill building, and how to develop self-love.