Optimal You Services

Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART) is a unique approach to therapy. The ART Therapist guides the client to replace the negative images in the mind that cause the symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress with positive images of the client’s choosing. And this is done quickly, most often within one session! Once the negative images have been replaced by positive ones, the triggers will be gone. Nightmares and repeated intrusive thoughts will stop.

One of the special aspects of ART is that when clients replace their negative images with positive ones they don’t need to talk to the therapist about any details of the trauma. This is because ART is procedural, though creative; and the client is really in control of the process, while the ART Therapist is a helpful guide. This makes the therapy easier on the client.

Laura Walton, LMFT​ provides Accelerated Resolution Therapy at Optimal You

Acupuncture is a system of care that dates back over 5000 years, which balances energy pathways, called meridians through the use of specific points along these acupuncture channels. These meridians can be understood as pathways of communication and flow that influence the nervous system, circulation, muscle tone, organ function, and the connective tissue network. Current research shows a profound interrelationship of the acupuncture system and our body’s fascial system.

Because fascia and connective tissue connect every part of the body, restrictions or imbalances in one area can affect movement, tension, pain, and overall function elsewhere. Each visit includes an evaluation for balance across the meridian system, helping guide treatment based on what your body is showing that day.

Treatment may include traditional acupuncture needles, or more modern approaches such as laser acupuncture and/or electrical stimulation, depending on what is most appropriate and comfortable for each person.

Jeff Donahue, DC, LAc, provides Acupuncture at Optimal You.

Auriculotherapy is the detection and treatment of reflex points on the ear. While often associated with acupuncture, it is more accurately understood as a specialized form of neural therapy that uses specific ear points corresponding to the nervous system. Stimulation of these points influence pain response and overall body regulation. The ear acts like a microsystem of the body, with points that relate to different areas and functions.

This approach can be especially helpful for calming a stressed or overactive nervous system, supporting emotional balance, and helping reduce pain patterns. Auriculotherapy has also been used as an integrated tool in addiction treatment, as stimulation of these reflex points help support nervous system regulation and brain chemistry balance. Treatment may involve gentle stimulation with pellets, laser, or microcurrent/electrical stimulation, depending on the needs and comfort of each person.

Jeff Donahue, DC, LAc, provides Acupuncture at Optimal You.

Autistic Centered Therapy is an approach designed to move beyond labels and language, focusing instead on the lived experience of Autistic individuals. Rooted in the neurodiversity movement, this approach emphasizes true understanding, deepened rapport, and meaningful support for Autistic clients and their families.

This model explores the unique ways Autism can shape brain function, relationships, executive function, mood, trauma, and health. With a trauma-informed, affirming lens, Autistic Centered Therapy helps clients explore their identity, strengthen self-advocacy, and integrate their experiences into daily life with authenticity and confidence.

Laura Walton, LMFT provides Autistic Centered Therapy at Optimal You

Brainspotting is a powerful, focused treatment method that works by identifying, processing and releasing core neurophysiological sources of emotional/body pain, trauma, dissociation and a variety of other challenging symptoms. Brainspotting is a simultaneous form of diagnosis and treatment, enhanced with Biolateral sound, which is deep, direct, and powerful yet focused and containing.

Brainspotting functions as a neurobiological tool to support the clinical healing relationship. There is no replacement for a mature, nurturing therapeutic presence and the ability to engage another suffering human in a safe and trusting relationship where they feel heard, accepted, and understood.

Brainspotting gives us a tool, within this clinical relationship, to neurobiologically locate, focus, process, and release experiences and symptoms that are typically out of reach of the conscious mind and its cognitive and language capacity.

Brainspotting works with the deep brain and the body through its direct access to the autonomic and limbic systems within the body’s central nervous system. Brainspotting is accordingly a physiological tool/treatment which has profound psychological, emotional, and physical consequences.

Laura Walton, LMFT provides Brainspotting at Optimal You.

Compassionate Bereavement Care is a mindfulness-based, non-medicalized approach to traumatic grief. The model is a framework based in the art of full presence. ATTEND (attunement, trust, therapeutic touch, egalitarianism, nuance, and death education) is a mindful and evidence-based, culturally sensitive paradigm for compassionate care to the traumatically bereaved which does not pathologize grief. This model has been shown to reduce depressive, anxious, and trauma symptomatology in both clients and clinicians.

These are the guiding principles for Compassionate Bereavement Care certified providers:

1. We believe that traumatic grief presents the most difficult and painful circumstances for individuals, families, communities, and even clinicians;
2. We believe that good clinical care and compassionate communities help create a safe environment in which individuals and families are better able to cope with traumatic loss in their grief journey;
3. We, as providers, commit to building relationships based on civic love and compassion with the individuals and families we help. We agree to adherence to these principals as part of the Certification in Compassionate Bereavement Care®. We will provide personalized care according to each client’s nuanced needs and their own comfort level. We agree to tender, non-coercive counseling and treatment;
4. We support our clients’ participation in healthy, grief-related activities according to their comfort level;
5. We trust our clients/patients know best what their own unique needs are and we do our best to meet them at that place, accommodating them on their terms, not ours;
6. We respect each person’s unique grieving style and engage in mindful, nonjudgmental relationships which do not pathologize their experiences of grief and grief expressions;
7. We do not diagnose or label grief as mental illness;
8. We believe in family strengths and we do our best to use those to benefit our clients and their family systems;
9. As clinicians, we pledge to remember and honor those who have died and stand with our families as they mourn;
10. We care deeply for our clients and engage in activities which reflect such human caring;
11. We believe that self-care and compassion and ongoing education are penultimate to our client’s well-being. Thus, we commit to actively engage in daily self-care and ongoing educational opportunities as providers;
12. We strive to offer uniquely individualized care that creates healing environments for our clients. We are not constricted by rigid guidelines or rules which do not, ultimately, result in best care practices for our families.
13. Guided by the ethics of human compassion we serve, we care, we nurture, we love.

Laura Walton, LMFT provides Compassionate Bereavement Care at Optimal You

Deep Brain Reorienting (DBR) is a new and novel trauma processing psychotherapeutic approach developed by psychiatrist, Dr. Frank Corrigan, of Glasgow, Scotland.  DBR is found to access and metabolize the more deeply stored shock and core emotional pain, clients most likely experienced during traumatic childhood and other traumatic life events, that remains energetically held in their bodies, inaccessible with most therapies.  It is the trapped shock and emotional pain that continue to block full healing and behavioral change, and many times, can result in converting into chronic pain, somatic symptoms, and auto-immune disorders.

Grounded in neuroscience, DBR theory posits that there is a shock alarm pathway, initiated through the brain stem’s circuitry at the Mid Brain or Superior Collicular level that when triggered, determines how we instinctively respond to either safe or threatening conditions.  With chronic or even severe single incident traumas, this circuitry can get locked into responding to stress or disturbances as if we are under continuous threat of catastrophic harm, either from the environment, other people, or from within us.

This sensitized or locked circuitry can lead to manifestations of acute or chronic anxiety, depression, hypervigilance, sleep disruptions, emotional outbursts, isolation, negative beliefs, and the myriad maladaptive coping strategies known to be used to avoid feeling the deeply stored shock, emotional pain and affects associated with the trauma.

By processing the trauma related shock, emotional pain and associated affects, the Mid Brain circuitry settles, allowing for clients to have different, less intense responses to everyday stressors and disturbances.

The DBR process begins with accessing the sequence of the trauma through the brain stem’s circuitry at the top of the brain stem at the Mid Brain level – the information hub that orients to our surroundings through sight, sound, and sensation, and instinctively responds accordingly to what is best for our survival.

By dropping to this Superior Collicular level of awareness that is below (and before) the brain’s upper level limbic emotional and cortical complex thinking processes’ attempts to respond and  make sense of a trauma, DBR goes to the pre-verbal root of where the trauma first registered in the brain stem – unwinds the sequence of and allows processing of the pre-affective shock, any shock induced dissociation, the trapped emotional pain, such as the pain of aloneness, abandonment, rejection or humiliation experienced during or as a result of the trauma, the related chemical dissociation perhaps blocking access to the deeply stored emotional pain and affects, then finally to the trauma associated affects of fear, rage, grief and shame.

Much of the DBR processing is done in silence, using a recent activating stimulus or disturbance as a portal through the brain stem into the trapped energy sequence, clients are guided to be with and allow the sensations to clear and metabolize.  Intentionally slowing down the trauma sequence allows clients to build a tolerance for accessing and processing through the various elements of trauma with less overwhelm during the DBR process.

Though DBR is not for everyone, DBR has been reported as transformative and less jarring than many trauma therapies. Clients have reported positive shifts in how they see themselves, others, and the world with increases in self-compassion, agency and reductions in trauma-related symptoms and reactions.  For more about DBR, its theory, research, and articles, visit https://deepbrainreorienting.com/#about

Three major theoretical frameworks—a behavioral science biosocial model of the development of chronic mental health issues, the mindfulness practice of Zen Buddhism, and the philosophy of dialectics—combine to form the basis for DBT.

The biosocial theory attempts to explain how issues related to borderline personality develop. The theory posits that some people are born with a predisposition toward emotional vulnerability. Environments that lack solid structure and stability can intensify a person’s negative emotional responses and influence patterns of interaction that become destructive. These patterns can harm relationships and functioning across all settings and often result in suicidal behavior and/or a diagnosis of borderline personality.

DBT draws mindfulness techniques from Zen Buddhism in order to use here-and-now presence of mind to help people in therapy objectively and calmly assess situations. Mindfulness training allows people to take stock of their current experience, evaluate the facts, and focus on one thing at a time.

Dialectics are used to support both the therapist and person in treatment in pulling from both extremes of any issue. Therapists use dialectics to help people accept the parts of themselves they do not like and to provide motivation and encouragement to address the change of those parts. Synthesizing polar opposites can reduce tension and help keep therapy moving forward.

Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) is a therapy designed to help people change patterns of behavior that are not helpful, such as self-harm, suicidal thinking, and substance abuse.

Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) is a type of cognitive behavioral therapy. Its main goal is to teach the patient skills to cope with stress, regulate emotions and improve relationships with others.

Learn more at www.linehaninstitute.org.

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a cost-effective, non-invasive, evidence-based method of psychotherapy which was originally developed by Francine Shapiro, PhD in the late 1980’s for PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). There have been 24 randomized control studies of EMDR therapy which attest to its value and demonstrate its usefulness across all ages, genders, and cultures. Tens of thousands of clinicians have been trained all over the world in EMDR therapy and studies have supported the use of EMDR with many special populations with an assortment of conditions such as Acute Stress Disorder due to Recent Incident trauma or disasters, personality disorders, eating disorders, anxiety, panic attacks, phobias, performance anxiety, complicated grief, dissociative disorders, addictions,  chronic pain, sexual and/or physical abuse, ADHD, and body dysmorphic disorders, just to name a few.

EMDR has been accepted as an effective form of treatment by several major health organizations including most recently the WHO (World Health Organization). It is listed as an evidenced–based practice by SAMHSA (Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration) and NREPP (National Registry of Evidenced Based Practices and Programs) and the VA/DOD Clinical Practice Guidelines (2004, 2010) recognize EMDR as being a “A” category (the highest level designation) for treatment of trauma.

EMDR is an eight-phase treatment which comprehensively identifies and addresses experiences that have overwhelmed the brain’s natural resilience or coping capacity, and have thereby generated traumatic symptoms and/or harmful coping strategies.

Through EMDR therapy, patients are able to reprocess traumatic information until it is no longer psychologically disruptive. EMDR is a physiologically–based therapy that appears to be similar to what occurs naturally in REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep and seems to have a direct effect on the way our brain processes and stores information.

The Adaptive Information Processing Model is the guiding principle of the EMDR approach and it postulates that health and wellbeing is supported by positive and successful experiences that increasingly prepare a person to handle new challenges and that the brain is equipped to manage and process adversity. Sometimes it just needs a little help. EMDR Therapy utilizes a 3 pronged approach which includes not only a focus on past (contributory) memories, but also focused reprocessing of present situation that continue to be triggering, as well as the development of an adaptive, positive template for the future.

“EMDR therapy shows that the mind can in fact heal from psychological trauma much as the body recovers from physical trauma.  When you cut your hand, your body works to close the wound.  If a foreign object or repeated injury irritates the wound, it festers and causes pain.  Once the block is removed, healing resumes.  EMDR therapy demonstrates that a similar sequence of events occurs with mental processes.  The brain’s information processing system naturally moves toward mental health.  If the system is blocked or imbalanced by the impact of a disturbing event, the emotional wound festers and can cause intense suffering.  Once the block is removed, healing resumes.  Using the detailed protocols and procedures learned in EMDR therapy training sessions, clinicians help clients activate their natural healing processes.”  (Francine Shapiro, EMDR .com)

For more information, go to www.emdr.com, www.EMDRIA.org, www.aztrn.org (Early EMDR Intervention and Disaster response). www.emdrhap.org (International Humanitarian organization)  Shapiro’s describes EMDR therapy in a 1 hour webinar/video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsQbzfW9txc

Optimal You professionals providing EMDR:

Beverlee Laidlaw Chasse, MC, LPC
Nancy Harkins, MA, LPC
Tamara Nezirevic, MC, LPC
Angela Record, LCSW
Lisa Watson, MC, LPC
Laura Walton, LMFT

What is EFT – Tapping?

Millions of people are settling for lives filled with poor health and emotional baggage. Not knowing how to achieve the joyful and satisfying lives they desire, they’re stuck accepting a lifestyle of emotional trauma, chronic physical pain, compulsions and addictions, or perhaps just an empty feeling inside. Along with these problems come pills to kill the pain, sleep at night, and suppress anxiety – but this is hardly better than the disease.

If you’re like many people, you feel trapped, caught in this cycle. You’re tired of feeling sad, depressed, anxious, discontent, and unwell. You’re sick of the expensive and ineffective treatments. You’re fed up with relinquishing the power over your health and happiness to psychologists and doctors. You’d like to grow, flourish, and thrive, putting the past in the past. You want to be your best, living a life that is filled with peacefulness, joy, and fulfillment, from day to day and moment to moment.

With Tapping, you can do that. You can discover the vital secret for emotional wholeness and physical relief. You can take your physical and emotional well-being into your own hands. It’s simple for anyone to master, and it’s free.

Tapping provides relief from chronic pain, emotional problems, disorders, addictions, phobias, post traumatic stress disorder, and physical diseases. While Tapping is newly set to revolutionize the field of health and wellness, the healing concepts that it’s based upon have been in practice in Eastern medicine for over 5,000 years. Like acupuncture and acupressure, Tapping is a set of techniques which utilize the body’s energy meridian points. You can stimulate these meridian points by tapping on them with your fingertips – literally tapping into your body’s own energy and healing power.

Your body is more powerful than you can imagine… filled with life, energy, and a compelling ability for self-healing. With Tapping, you can take control of that power.

So How Does It All Work?

All negative emotions are felt through a disruption of the body’s energy. And physical pain and disease are intricately connected to negative emotions. Health problems create feedback – physical symptoms cause emotional distress, and unresolved emotional problems manifest themselves through physical symptoms. So, the body’s health must be approached as a whole. You cannot treat the symptoms without addressing the cause, and vice-versa.

The body, like everything in the universe, is composed of energy. Restore balance to the body’s energy, and you will mend the negative emotions and physical symptoms that stem from the energy disruption. Tapping restores the body’s energy balance, and negative emotions are conquered.

The basic technique requires you to focus on the negative emotion at hand: a fear or anxiety, a bad memory, an unresolved problem, or anything that’s bothering you. While maintaining your mental focus on this issue, use your fingertips to tap 5-7 times each on 12 of the body’s meridian points. Tapping on these meridian points – while concentrating on accepting and resolving the negative emotion – will access your body’s energy, restoring it to a balanced state.

You may be wondering about these meridians. Put simply, energy circulates through your body along a specific network of channels. You can tap into this energy at any point along the system.

This concept comes from the doctrines of traditional Chinese medicine, which referred to the body’s energy as “ch’i.” In ancient times, the Chinese discovered 100 meridian points. They also discovered that by stimulating these meridian points, they could heal. Call it energy, call it the Source, call it life force, call it ch’i… Whatever you want to call it, it works.

In some ways, Tapping is similar to acupuncture. Like Tapping, acupuncture achieves healing through stimulating the body’s meridians and energy flow. However, unlike Tapping, acupuncture involves needles! “No needles” is definitely one of the advantages of Tapping.

Acupuncture also takes years to master. Acupuncture practitioners must memorize hundreds of meridian points along the body; the knowledge and training take years to acquire.

Tapping is simple and painless. It can be learned by anyone. And you can apply it to yourself, whenever you want, wherever you are. It’s less expensive and less time consuming. It can be used with specific emotional intent towards your own unique life challenges and experiences. Most importantly, it gives you the power to heal yourself, putting control over your destiny back into your own hands.

The Science Behind Tapping’s Success

Like many healing arts that draw upon ancient wisdom, Tapping has been met with a fair share of skepticism. Many doctors and psychologists have been quick to dismiss it as “woo woo”, despite the heaping anecdotal evidence from practitioners and people who have used EFT on their own.

In recent years however, there’s been a growing pool of undeniable research that proves what millions of people the world over have known for some time now: that EFT produces real, lasting breakthroughs and significantly improves or even eliminates conditions that hospital treatments, medication and years of psychotherapy often fail to adequately deal with.

Studies done at no less than Harvard Medical School verify these assertions. Research done at the prestigious university during the last decade found that the brain’s stress and fear response – which is controlled by an almond-shaped part of your brain called the amygdala – could be lessened by stimulating the meridian points used in acupuncture, acupressure, and of course, tapping.

Although these studies focused on acupuncture and as such, used needles, follow-up double-blind research revealed that stimulating the points through pressure, as we do in tapping, gave rise to a similar response!

Another exciting set of research was undertaken by Dr. Dawson Church. His team performed a randomized controlled trial to study how an hour-long tapping session would impact the stress levels of 83 subjects. To do this, Dr. Church and his team measured their level of cortisol, a hormone secreted by the body when it undergoes stress. Their findings? The average level of cortisol reduction was 24%, with a whopping reduction of almost 50% in some subjects! In comparison, there was no significant cortisol reduction in those who underwent an hour of traditional talk therapy.

Dr. Church also created The Stress Project, which teaches tapping to war veterans suffering with PTSD. The results have been astounding: an average 63% decrease in PTSD symptoms after six rounds of tapping. It’s mind-blowing and exciting research, which has converted many non-believers in the scientific community along the way. All signs indicate that this trend of revealing research and swayed skeptics will continue as millions of people around the globe continue to discover the power of tapping.

(The above information is taken directly from www.thetappingsolution.com.  Visit the website to learn more about the history of tapping, an introduction to the tapping points, a basic tapping sequence for anxiety and additional resources.)

Mary Triller, MDiv, MTh, is a Certified Level II Practitioner in Emotional Freedom Techniques – Tapping and provides EFT – Tapping at Optimal You.  

Emotionally Focused Therapy is a structured form of couples’ therapy, built alongside the science of attachment and bonding. It helps couples increase connection, rebuild trust, feel supported, and cultivate fulfillment and intimacy in their relationships.

Research regarding the effectiveness of Emotionally Focused Therapy over the last thirty years, demonstrates that EFT is the most empirically valid form of couples’ therapy currently in use by qualified therapists. Importantly, the research also shows that after completing EFT, 90 percent of couples experience improvement in their relationships, no matter how much they previously struggled. Research on the success of EFT demonstrates that couples consistently resolve conflict, recapture love, improve communication, and move from emotional distress to recovery.  EFT is uniquely effective in addressing relationship injuries, including, but certainly not limited to, infidelity. Couples using EFT report feeling more intimate, understood, and valued by their partners. Other common couples therapeutic models that focus on how to communicate better or how to problem solve have been proven less effective than Emotionally Focused Therapy. With EFT, couples get to the root of the problem instead of only treating the symptoms. In session, we will work together in a nonjudgmental, safe space to uncover the vulnerable feelings that lie below the surface and address the real questions that are driving your negative patterns of interactions.

Lisa Watson MC, LPC and Laura Walton, LMFT  use EFT in working with all couples at Optimal You.

The Enneagram is an ancient framework for understanding personality patterns, plus ongoing evolution in self and others. It helps people see their needs, fears, and gifts, and shows them where they could be inadvertently limiting their own development. Encompassing both spirituality and psychology, it helps people evolve towards living and working more authentically.

The Enneagram allows people to observe themselves thoroughly, yet compassionately. Have you ever wondered what it might be like for others to be “on the receiving end of you?” Have you ever noticed that certain clashes in relationships recur over and over? Exploring one’s life through the Enneagram can clarify these areas, plus help people respond with more awareness and patience. It’s far more than a “personality test”; it includes human energies, describes how people deal with various painful emotions, and offers pathways for personal healing and transformation. And more.

Each person has all 9 of the basic personality patterns within, but gravitates to one most reliably. Still, there are differences in tone and in expressions of various instincts, which affect how people show up. Perhaps even more important is level of consciousness (or awareness). The DSM 5 tends to pathologize personality attributes, and does not describe levels of awareness at all. However through the Enneagram lens, one can discover one’s own inner story and how this affects experience. Once seen deeply, awareness expands. These insights serve health, because people also realize that “it doesn’t have to go this way” with them anymore. Catching themselves earlier and earlier in their patterns, they can choose differently – and this can be liberating for everyone.

Enhancing self-awareness and self-responsibility as it does, the Enneagram can be a useful addition to both psychological treatments and coaching processes. Using the RHETI online questionnaire is a reasonable starting point, while realizing that the person himself/herself is the best judge of accuracy of results. Deeper learning is always possible, and some need more time, reflection, and self-observation to clarify understanding. Professionals skilled in Enneagram can facilitate this process.  

Nancy Harkins MA, LPC is Enneagram certified. She uses the Enneagram as a therapeutic intervention to guide clients into a deeper understanding of themselves and others.

Energy psychology (EP) is a mind-body approach to understanding and improving human functioning. EP focuses on the relationship between bioenergy systems, neuro and electro physiological processes, and mental functions involving thoughts, emotions, sensations, and behavior.

EP applications incorporate natural energetic components into the treatment process that include, but are not limited to, meridians, chakras, biofields, and bio-electrical and electromagnetic activity of the body, the nervous system and the heart.

EP practitioners often combine cognitive and physical interventions with activation of one or more of the human bio-energy systems. Some practitioners focus on the way in which thought and intention are expressed in the bioenergy system, and explore the therapeutic value of precise use of language and congruent intention. EP approaches are often exceedingly rapid, have little to no adverse effects, are usually experienced as self-empowering by clients and patients, and are easily amenable to self-help protocols.

EP models have been beneficially applied to assessment and treatment of trauma, anxiety, depression, pain, stress, psychophysiological issues, and self-sabotaging behaviors by a broad range of healthcare providers, to regulate affect and promote emotional and physical health.

“Treatment results have been shown to be enduring and relatively rapid. There are currently over 60 research studies, including multiple Randomized Controlled Trials (RCT) published in professional and refereed journals, confirming the treatment value of EP. Taken as a body of knowledge, these findings suggest that EP meets the criteria for evidenced-based treatment.”(ACEP website)

Read more at www.energypsych.org

Beverlee Laidlaw Chasse, MC, LPC, MA, HMI  and Mary Triller, MDiv, MTh provide Energy Psychology services at Optimal You.

Families are complex systems – when one person is struggling, the impact is often felt by everyone. Family therapy provides a supportive space for families to come together, improve communication, and strengthen connection. In sessions, we look at patterns within the family, explore how past experiences and dynamics may be shaping current challenges, and learn new ways of relating that foster understanding and healing.

Laura Walton, LMFT, provides Family Therapy at Optimal You.

Functional nutrition looks beyond symptoms and standard lab values to better understand how the body is actually working. In addition to standard medical panels, functional laboratory testing can help identify patterns of imbalance that may not be obvious when chemistry values are simply kept within “normal” limits.

This approach looks at three major areas that strongly influence overall health: stress and hormonal balance, gastrointestinal health, and metabolic efficiency. These systems affect how the body regulates inflammation, produces energy, repairs tissue, processes nutrients, and maintains resilience.

When stress chemistry, hormones, digestion, or metabolism are out of balance, the effects can show up in many ways — including fatigue, inflammation, pain, poor recovery, mood changes, and increased tension in the connective tissues. Because fascia and connective tissue respond to the internal environment of the body, functional nutrition can be an important part of supporting better movement, emotional balance, and long-term healing.

Treatment may include functional lab testing, nutrition and lifestyle recommendations, targeted supplementation, and ongoing support based on each person’s individual needs.

Jeff Donahue, DC, LAc, provides Acupuncture at Optimal You.

Gestalt therapy, developed by Fritz Perls, Laura Perls in the 1940s, is an experiential and humanistic form of therapy that was originally designed as an alternative to conventional psychoanalysis. Gestalt therapists and their clients use creative and experiential techniques to enhance awareness, freedom, and self-direction.The theory of Gestalt takes as its centerpiece two ideas: 1) hear and now awareness, and 2) we are inextricably caught in a web of relationship with all things. So it is only possible to truly know ourselves as we exist in relation to other things.

The idea is to avoid dwelling on the past or anxiously anticipating the future.

Experiences of the past may be addressed in therapy sessions, but the therapist and client will focus on exploring what factors made a particular memory come up in this moment, or how the present moment is impacted by experiences of the past.

At the core of Gestalt therapy is the holistic view that people are intricately linked to and influenced by their environments and that all people strive toward growth and balance. In the Gestalt approach emphasis is on the therapist’s use of empathy, understanding, and unconditional acceptance of the client to enhance therapeutic outcomes.

Read more at gestalttheory.com.

Beverlee Laidlaw Chasse, MC, LPC and Tamara Nezirevic, MC, LPC provide Gestalt Therapy at Optimal You.

www.griefrecoverymethod.com

Are you suffering from a broken heart?

Did a death, divorce, or the end of a romantic relationship cause it? Or was it caused by any of the forty other losses that a person might experience such as moving, pet loss, or a change in finances? Regardless of the cause, you know how you feel and it probably isn’t good. You might feel sad, distracted, or confused. You are not alone. The Grief Recovery Method has been helping people feel better following a loss for 40 years.

We aren’t going to tell you, “We know how you feel,” because we don’t. Neither does anyone else. What we will do is provide a safe environment where you will be given specific tools to help you recover from loss and ultimately lead a happier life.

The Problem

Grief is the normal and natural emotional response to loss, but most of the information we’ve learned about dealing with loss is intellectual. Although working through the Grief Recovery Method involves some educational elements, effective Grief Recovery must deal with your broken heart, which requires emotional support instead of intellectual explanations.

Myths about Grief

Time heals all wounds
Replace the loss
Grieve alone
Be strong
Don’t feel bad
Keep busy

The Solution

People say you have to let go and move on in your life, but they don’t tell you how. The Grief Recovery Method, developed and refined over the past 30 years, teaches you how to recover from loss with supportive guidance every step of the way.

Who Is It For

The Grief Recovery Method is for anyone who has experienced any kind of loss.

Is it Ever Too Soon to Start Grief Recovery

No! It is never too soon to address your grief. If you broke your leg would you wait to call the doctor? Then why wait to get help when you break your heart? You’ve probably heard that time heals all wounds. That piece of misinformation creates the idea that you just have to wait to feel better. We have known people who have waited ten, twenty, thirty, and forty years, and still didn’t feel better. And they would tell you that not only had time not healed them, but also it compounded the pain. It’s not time that heals, but what you do within time.

A Grief Recovery Method Specialist assists you to look at your old beliefs about dealing with loss, which losses have affected your life, and take actions that will lead you to complete unresolved emotions that may still be causing you pain.

Don’t wait any longer. Time alone will not heal your broken heart.

(The above information was taken from www.griefrecoverymethod.com)

Mary Triller, MDiv, MTh, is a certified Grief Recovery Specialist and provides Grief Recovery at Optimal You.

“The most powerful thing the therapist does for us is provide a setting, a nourishing womb, in which our lives can unfold. Through the physical setting and, most important, the setting of his own being, he creates a place of safety; a trustworthy place where all life is befriended through an affirmation of faith in our wisdom and creativity.”

–Gregory Johanson, Ph.D., Hakomi Institute Co-Founder and Senior Trainer

The Hakomi Method of Experiential Psychotherapy is a body-centered approach developed by Ron Kurtz, which combines somatic awareness with experiential techniques to promote psychological growth and transformation.

Hakomi integrates principles of Eastern philosophy — primarily Buddhism and Taoism —  emphasizing concepts such as mindfulness, loving presence, and empathy. Kurtz also incorporated additional influences, such as general systems theory and a range of body-centered therapeutic approaches such as Gestalt therapy,  Psychomotor therapy, Reichian breathwork,  Feldenkrais method, Focusing, Bioenergetic analysis, Structural bodywork, Neuro-linguistic programming, and Eriksonian hypnosis.

In the Hakomi Method, gestures, posture, facial expressions, and other bodily experiences provide information about a person’s core material. This core material can be described as a combination of the images, memories, emotions, and beliefs — even those hidden from awareness — determining a person’s individual nature and may also serve to place limits on one’s individuality and goals. Individuals can eventually develop a clearer understanding of this core material and, with the assistance of compassionate, gentle assistance from professionals trained in Hakomi, can examine, challenge, and ultimately transform any self-defeating beliefs or behaviors.

Read more at www.hakomiinstitute.com.

Beverlee Laidlaw Chasse, MC, LPC provides Hakomi Therapy at Optimal You.

HeartMath™ is a unique system that combines rigorous research, advanced technologies, and validated techniques in training individuals to reduce stress and enhance their lives using biofeedback software. By generating an optimal physiological and psychological state called coherence, one is improving their nervous-system harmony, emotional stability, and cognitive performance.

What Is Coherence?

In regards to HeartMath™ services, coherence refers to the harmony of the rhythmic activities of the body including heart rate, blood pressure, and respiration. Our research indicates that when the body experiences positive emotional states, it functions in a coherent manner, providing an endless amount of physical, emotional, and mental benefits.

When we allow negative emotions like anxiety, depression, and frustration to dominate our lives, the pattern of our heart rate variability (HRV) becomes disordered, which directly effects our physical and psychological performances. When we monitor heart rhythms through our software, we can study the physiological and psychological status, as well as predicting future health risk, with the intention of reaching a coherent state. When a coherent system is learned, the heart sends more information to the brain, improving cognitive performance.

Using HRV analysis, we study the coherence through our software and determine where improvement is necessary. Coherence doesn’t mean that everybody or all the parts of the body are doing the same thing all the time. Think of a jazz band, for example, where the individual players are each doing their own thing, yet keeping in tune and step with the whole band. Coherence, in this sense, maximizes local freedom and global cohesion.

Unlike relaxation, the coherence state does not necessarily involve a lowering of heart rate or a change in the amount of HRV, but rather is primarily marked by a change in the heart-rhythm pattern. Relaxation is a low-energy state in which the individual rests both the body and mind, typically disengaging from cognitive and emotional processes. In contrast, coherence generally involves the active engagement of positive emotions. Psychologically, coherence is experienced as a calm, balanced, yet energized and responsive state that is conducive to everyday functioning and interaction, including the performance of tasks requiring mental acuity, focus, problem-solving and decision-making, as well as physical activity and coordination.

How can HeartMath™ help?

When you arrive at a HeartMath™ session at Optimal You, we’ll connect you with emWave and Inner Balance software and go through a series of relaxation and breathing techniques.

The HeartMath™ software clearly identifies your heart rhythm and coherence. Our goal is to help you reduce stress, improve cardiovascular health, balance different systems in your body including the immune and hormones, and increase your longevity, happiness, energy, and clear thought process.

Emotions drive our physiological and psychological states, which is why it’s crucial to learn how to manage emotions in a beneficial and harmonious way. Heart Math will regulate your emotional process, monitoring your heart and coherence, then provide techniques and feedback based on the results from our innovative software to help you make positive changes in your life.

The following symptoms and conditions can be treated with HeartMath™:

• High Blood Pressure
• Alexithymia
• Insomnia
• Depression
• Anxiety
• Headaches (tension type and migraines)
• Cardiovascular rehab
• ADD/ADHD
• Addictions
• Performance/Test Anxiety
• Chronic Pain
• Chronic Fatigue
• Environmental sensitivity
• Fibromyalgia
• Cancer
• Traumatic brain injury
• Arthritis
• Phantom pain and amputation
• PTSD
• Atopic dermatitis
• Diabetes Type I and II
• Autism
• Hypertension
• Inflammatory bowel disease (Crohn’s and ulcerative colitis)
• Muscle spasticity
• Immune-system dysfunction
• OCD
• Congestive Heart Failure
• Loss and Grief
• Eating Disorders
• Reflex sympathetic dystrophy (complex regional pain syndrome)

Beverlee Laidlaw Chasse, MC, LPC provides HeartMath™ services with biofeedback monitoring at Optimal You.

Developed by Dr. Allan Botkin, IADC Therapy is a brief, intensive intervention for grieving clients. As a derivative of EMDR Therapy, it implements vital changes to the standard EMDR protocol to target clients’ sadness associated with their loss. In a majority of cases, clients will experience a perception of connection with their deceased loved-one, resulting in a profoundly healing transformation of their grief.

Laura Walton, LMFT​ provides IADC at Optimal You

Integrated bodywork blends the best elements of chiropractic care, acupuncture-based bodywork (Tuina), massage, neuromuscular therapy, and fascia release to help restore movement, balance, and flow through the body’s connective tissue system.

Rather than focusing only on the painful area, this approach considers how all of the connective tissues — joints, ligaments, muscles, tendons, bones, fascia, and cartilage — work together to influence tension, restriction, mobility, and movement efficiency.

This hands-on care is a gentle, non-invasive way of helping restore normal movement patterns. This is supported outside of the office with specific exercises, stretches, and movement recommendations to facilitate progress between visits. This “homework” helps reinforce the changes made during treatment and gives each person practical tools to improve function in daily life.

Jeff Donahue, DC, LAc, provides Acupuncture at Optimal You.

Psychedelic experiences can offer profound opportunities for healing and insight, yet they may also feel overwhelming or difficult to integrate. Psychedelic-assisted therapy provides a supportive, structured space for both preparation and integration, helping individuals process their experiences and translate them into meaningful, lasting change.

Support is also available for those engaging in self-administered, low-dose ketamine sessions, ensuring therapeutic guidance throughout the process. This approach is trauma-informed and holistic, drawing on mindfulness and somatic practices to emphasize integration – the process of weaving insights from psychedelic experiences into daily life in ways that foster growth, resilience, and transformation.

      Laura Walton, LMFT, provides Ketamine Assisted Therapy at Optimal You

     Laura Walton, LMFT, provides MIGDAS-2 Assessments at Optimal You

“Mindfulness” describes a mental state of nonjudgmental attention to and awareness of the present moment — along with calm acknowledgment of feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations as they arise. Mindfulness can also describe a type of meditation practice which cultivates this awareness, a quality all human beings possess.

According to Mindful.org, “mindfulness is the basic human ability to be fully present, aware of where we are and what we’re doing, and not overly reactive or overwhelmed by what’s going on around us.”

Mindfulness meditation comes from early Buddhist traditions over 2500 years old, developed to foster

• clear thinking
• compassion
• open-heartedness, and
• the alleviation of suffering

Despite its Buddhist origins, mindfulness meditation requires no special religious or cultural belief system. In fact, Jon-Kabat-Zinn PhD is internationally known for bringing these practices to the West – creating a research-based program called “Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction” that has benefited people from all walks of life. This program has been a helpful ancillary form of treatment for many patients with conditions such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer, depression, anxiety, psoriasis, and other chronic conditions caused or exacerbated by modifiable lifestyle factors.

As one aim of mindfulness is to take greater responsibility for one’s life choices, it may both strengthen one’s internal resources for optimizing health, and evoke greater engagement with one’s health care too.

Ample research documents effectiveness of mindfulness practices in avoiding relapse in depression, addictions, and also in many forms of anxiety. Studies of its applications in trauma survivors are underway as well. Some forms of psychotherapy which use these practices include Dialectic Behavior Therapy (DBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), and Mindfulness-Based Relapse Prevention. It is not a panacea, though. Psychiatrists and therapists keep aware of potential pitfalls with certain types of people, conditions, and timing. For instance, actively psychotic patients may worsen with long periods of silence in an extended mindfulness retreat. Once symptoms remit though, the person may be well able to participate and benefit from such programs.

Mindfulness can be taught as part of formal meditation practice, and also as integrated into everyday life situations. It isn’t about changing what you think or feel – but about becoming gradually more aware of these things in a moment-to-moment way. Through mindfulness practice, you can develop a wiser and more compassionate relationship with your own mind and body. This pays dividends not only in how you feel personally, but also in the quality of your relationships with others.

All Optimal You professionals apply some form of mindfulness principles or practice in their work.

Post Induction Therapy is a type of trauma therapy that was created to help people with developmental traumas that comes from abuse and neglect. This style of therapy was developed by Pia Mellody, a leading proponent of issues relating to love addiction and love avoidance, as well as codependency. This specialized therapy helps people find balance in core issues relating to their self-esteem, and personal feelings of shame. It also helps people develop better, long-lasting relationships with others, because they develop better relationships with themselves.

This style of therapy is largely used at The Meadows, which is a well-known treatment facility for issues with intimacy disorders and addictions. This is why it is also often referred to as “The Meadows Model”. This powerful therapeutic works to help clients work through childhood wounds, in a way that avoids becoming overly complex. Clients learn to support themselves in the here and now, rather than get immobilized by past trauma.

Help with Intimacy Issues

Some people struggle with becoming too dependent on others. On the other hand, others struggle with chronically avoiding building genuine connections. Post Induction Therapy (PIT) helps people understand how these struggles came to be.  Clients identify and heal old wounds, in a way that helps them notice their own breaking of boundaries and crossing of their own values system. This helps to enhance both friendships and romantic relationships. Thus, the PIT model also is effective for the most intense of these situations, including love addiction and love avoidance.

Help with Self-Esteem

The most important aspect of developing strong relationships with others is developing a strong relationship with yourself. Identifying areas where lacking self-respect impacts the self, as well as those around you, goes a long way in reaching intimacy goals. Post-Induction makes this more apparent to clients, while also helping them to work through the actual source of the self-esteem problem.

Help with Addictions

Many addictions have trauma at the very core of their energy. Post-Induction Therapy can help people deal with the trauma that is based in childhood relationship traumas. This can include abuse/neglect with parents, as well as abuse from peers. By helping clients to better understand these wounds, and work through them, clients are less likely to fall out of their recovery.

Post Induction Therapy can help with the following:

• Problems finding and maintaining stable relationships.
• Overcoming addiction related trauma.
• Becoming more comfortable dealing with personal emotions.
• Contending with issues of codependency.
• Avoiding intimacy with others.
• Problems with self-esteem and self-worth.

Laura Walton, LMFT provides Post Induction Therapy at Optimal You

Solution–Focused Brief Therapy is a practical goal–driven model with emphasis on clear, precise, and realistic goal negotiations. This approach assumes that you have some knowledge of what would make your life better even though you may need some help describing the details of your better life.

The foundational belief is that people who seek help already possess the minimal skills necessary to create solutions, but just need some help setting up the small, realistic and doable steps to achieve their desired goals.

As the name suggests, SFBT is future-focused, goal-directed, and focuses on solutions, rather than on the problems that brought clients to seek therapy.

Learn more at solutionfocused.net.

Beverlee Laidlaw Chasse, MC, LPC, Laura Walton, LMFT and Lisa Watson MC, LPC provide Solution-Focused Brief Therapy at Optimal You.

Spiritual direction is the practice of being with people as they attempt to deepen their relationship with the divine, or to learn and grow in their own personal spirituality. The person seeking direction shares stories of his or her encounters of the divine, or how he or she is cultivating a life attuned to spiritual things. The director listens and asks questions to assist the directee in his or her process of reflection and spiritual growth. Spiritual direction advocates claim that it develops a deeper awareness with the spiritual aspect of being human, and that it is not psychotherapy, counseling, or financial planning.

Mary Triller, MDiv, MTh provides Spiritual Direction services at Optimal You.

For many people, spirituality is an important part of making sense of life’s challenges, losses, and transitions. Spiritually informed therapy creates space in therapy, a place where spirituality is often ignored, to explore how spiritual beliefs, practices, and questions can support the healing process. This approach welcomes clients of all faiths, backgrounds, and traditions, as well as those who identify as spiritual but not religious, or who are simply curious about the role of spirituality in their lives.

Grounded in trauma-informed and holistic practices, spiritually informed therapy helps individuals integrate their inner experiences, reconnect with meaning, and cultivate resilience. It honors the whole person – mind, body, and spirit – while supporting a path toward growth and transformation.

Laura Walton, LMFT provides Spiritually Informed Therapy at Optimal You

Stress is part of being alive and some of its stimulating effects can be good, but too much of it can have a negative effect on our health. Stress Management and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy will help you learn more effective ways of coping with stress by:

• helping you recognize and evaluate any factors that may be putting you under any unnecessary stress,
• provide you with the stress management skills necessary for you to alter or change the feeling, thoughts, or behaviors that are aggravating or causing your current health problems, and
• will show you, through mindfulness based practices, that you can control physical stress by learning to relax and flow through it.

The various techniques that can be employed in a stress management therapy session include relaxation, biofeedback, cognitive behavior therapy (CBT), dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT), and mindfulness–based practices such as guided imagery, deep breathing, muscle stretching, and meditation. Instead of being stuck in flight, flight, or freeze, you learn how to flow.

See more at www.goodtherapy.org/mindfulness-based-approaches-contemplative-approaches.html.

Optimal You professionals providing Stress Reduction and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy:

Beverlee Laidlaw Chasse, MC, LPC
Tamara Nezirevic, MC, LPC
Lisa Watson MC, LPC
Laura Walton, LMFT

The keys to substance use problems involve answering two important questions; how did I get here and what do I do now? Dealing with underlying causes and conditions that created the substance use issue in the first place allows us to heal some old wounds that we are attempting to heal through substance use. With underlying issues addressed we can create healthy solutions for moving forward. However, there is no “one-size-fits-all” approach to dealing with substance use so we will collaborate together in creating what will work for you to achieve long-term recovery.

Optimal You professionals providing Substance Use Therapy:

Nancy Harkins, MA, LPC

Thought Field Therapy (TFT) is a technique for the rapid relief of all kinds of emotional distress. It works like acupuncture, without the needles, stimulating the body’s energy meridians to resolve problems with the body’s emotional control system. The patient taps on various parts of the body with their fingers. The results are amazing as many emotional problems can often disappear in minutes.” — tftpractitioners.net

Thought Field Therapy uses a tapping sequence in the form of a healing code that balances the body’s energy system and allows you to significantly reduce or eliminate most negative emotions within minutes, while promoting the body’s own healing ability. This is effective in finding immediate relief, but additional techniques are typically needed to stabilize the root issues.

Learn more at tfttapping.com.

Beverlee Laidlaw Chasse, MC, LPC  provides Thought Field Therapy (TFT) services at Optimal You.

Transpersonal psychotherapy is concerned with the study of humanity’s highest potential, and with the recognition, understanding, and realization of unitive, spiritual, and transcendent states of consciousness (Lajoie and Shapiro, 1992).

The goal of transpersonal psychotherapy goes beyond healing trauma to the awakening and attainment of our highest potential. The tenets, philosophies, and practices of the world’s spiritual and wisdom traditions are integrated with Western science, philosophy, and theory to create a full-spectrum psychospiritual developmental model. This model takes us from birth and normal Western developmental phases, to the awakening of spiritual consciousness and the awareness of our interconnection to all living things through a shared energy field, as depicted in Eastern and Native spiritual traditions (Siegel, 2018).

Going beyond conventional psychology’s continuum of maladaptive to adaptive emotions and behaviors, transpersonal psychotherapy recognizes an expanded view of human wholeness, transformation and inter-connectedness via the development of higher levels of spiritual consciousness.  As consciousness shifts, the context of one’s experience shifts, insights become more profound and transformative healing occurs.  Clients transcend their egoic or personal perspectives, seeing events from an expanded state of awareness, often with new solutions and elevated understanding.

Through the use of attunement to each client’s needs, resonance with higher levels of consciousness, guided imagery, various mindfulness practices, breathwork, and tools from ancient spiritual traditions, transpersonal therapists guide clients to their own inner wisdom, facilitating shifts in consciousness, understanding, well-being and ultimately to living their fullest potential.

Optimal You Professionals providing Transpersonal Psychotherapy:
Tamara Nezirevic, MC, LPC
Mary Triller, MDiv, MTH
Beverlee Laidlaw Chasse, MC, LPC
Laura Walton, LMFT