Sheila Walty, LCSW is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with over 25 years of experience counseling individuals and couples. Her specialty is trauma recovery including abuse, accidents, war and other traumas. Her counseling style is experiential as she uses multiple techniques to address the needs of her clients. Sheila’s therapy focuses on mind, body and spirit balance as she holistically evaluates and treats the client.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
Is a powerful new psychotherapy technique which has been very successful in helping people who suffer from trauma, anxiety, panic, disturbing memories, post traumatic stress and many other emotional problems. Until recently, these conditions were difficult and time consuming to treat. EMDR is considered a breakthrough therapy because of its simplicity and the fact that it can bring quick and lasting relief for most types of emotional distress.
EMDR therapy uses bilateral stimulation and right/left eye movement, or tactile stimulation, which repeatedly activates the opposite sides of the brain, releasing emotional experiences that are “trapped” in the nervous system. This assists the neurophysiological system, the basis of the mind/body connection, to free itself of blockages and reconnect itself. As troubling images and feelings are processed by the brain via the eye movement patterns of EMDR, resolution of these issues and a more peaceful state are achieved. EMDR does not involve the use of drugs or hypnosis. It is a simple, noninvasive patient-therapist collaboration in which healing can effectively take place.
Hakomi
Helps people change “core material.” Core material is composed of memories, images, beliefs, neural patterns and deeply held emotional dispositions. It shapes the styles, habits, behaviors, perceptions and attitudes that define us as individuals. Typically, core material exerts its influence unconsciously, by organizing our responses to the major themes of life: safety, belonging, support, power, freedom, control, responsibility, love, appreciation, sexuality, and spirituality amongst others. Some of this material supports us being who we wish to be, while some of it which is learned in response to acute and chronic stress, continues to limit us. Hakomi allows the client to distinguish between the two and to willingly change material that restricts his or her wholeness.
Hakomi is an experiential psychotherapy. Present experience is used as an access route to core, unconscious material that elicits and surfaces experientially and integrates positive changes back into the client’s experience. Hakomi is a body-centered, somatic psychotherapy. The body serves as a resource that reflects and stores formative memories and the core beliefs they have generated, and also provides significant access routes to core material.
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
Is a form of psychotherapy that emphasizes the role of thought with respects to how we feel, and what we do. Cognitive-behavioral therapy, CBT, is based on the idea that our thoughts cause our feelings and behaviors, not external things, like people, situations, and events. Cognitive-behavioral therapists seek to learn what their clients want out of life, such as their goals, and then help their clients achieve those goals.
CBT has gained stature among therapists, counselors, and psychiatrists as the preferred method of treatment for a number of psychological disorders, including depression, substance abuse, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. The therapist’s role is to listen, teach and encourage while the client’s role is to express, learn, and implement that learning. CBT is based on the scientifically supported assumption that most emotional and behavioral reactions are learned; therefore, the goal of therapy is to help clients unlearn their unwanted reactions and relearn a new way of reacting.
Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT)
EFT is accomplished by the tapping on acupressure points on the body in order to release emotions attached to negative life situations. Current situations are acknowledged while instilling positive thoughts and emotions about the future. EFT calms negative emotions and allows clients to move on in life.
