Optimal You Services

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 uses 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.

Pamela A. Pappas MD, MD(H) is certified in Enneagram Applications, and Enneagram and the Coach.  

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.

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.

Integrative Medicine is healing-oriented medicine that takes account of the whole person, including all aspects of lifestyle. It emphasizes the therapeutic relationship between practitioner and patient, is informed by evidence, and makes use of all appropriate therapies. This model has clear applications to those with mental health conditions such as depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress.

The Defining Principles of Integrative Medicine/Psychiatry

• Patient and practitioner are partners in the healing process.
• All factors that influence health, wellness, and disease are taken into consideration, including mind, spirit, and community, as well as the body.
• Appropriate use of both conventional and alternative methods facilitates the body’s innate healing response.
• Effective interventions that are natural and less invasive should be used whenever possible.
• Integrative medicine neither rejects conventional medicine nor accepts alternative therapies uncritically.
• Good medicine is based in good science. It is inquiry-driven and open to new paradigms.
• Alongside the concept of treatment, the broader concepts of health promotion and the prevention of illness are paramount.
• Practitioners of integrative medicine should exemplify its principles and commit themselves to self-exploration and self-development.

Pamela A. Pappas, MD, MD(H) is an integrative psychiatrist practicing 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 helps 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, provide Post Induction Therapy at Optimal You

Although physician burnout is at an all-time high (60% in some recent studies), most physicians were never trained to recognize its signs or prevent it in themselves, their professional colleagues, or their organizations. Burnout is a syndrome characterized by:

The developers of the MBI described physician burnout as:

“ . . . an erosion of the soul caused by a deterioration of one’s values, dignity, spirit and will.”

Burnout can be thought of as one end of a continuum, with Engagement on the other end:

Burnout <—————————–> Engagement

Most physicians go into medicine to help others, and to experience a feeling of purpose; it’s a vocation and calling for them. Feelings of fulfillment and satisfaction accompany being fully engaged in one’s career. When doctors can use their skills with excellence, relate deeply with and benefit others, AND also practice consistent self-care to replenish themselves when tired, this feeling and state of engagement is possible.

A host of factors edges physicians towards burnout – including:

• Medicine brings a high level of responsibility with little control over outcomes
• Working with ill people who are generally not happy to see us
• Medicine reinforces workaholism, a pattern that often begins before medical school
• No training in personal boundaries, and how to maintain them
• Being thrust into leadership of medical teams, with only dysfunctional “top down͟” leadership examples to draw on
• Physicians need support from their teams to work most efficiently — but tend to act like lone rangers
• Isolation from peers, due to intense work demands
• Hostile legal environment, and worry about lawsuits waiting to happen
• Dealing with insurance companies and other payors’ ever-changing demands
• Shifting organizational structures that change medical practices and patient referrals
• Political uncertainty
• Personal and family needs evolve and change over time
• And many more

The presence of physician burnout has been shown to

• Decrease physicians’ professionalism and the quality of medical care they provide
• Increase medical errors and malpractice rates
• Lower patient compliance and satisfaction with medical care
• Increase rates of physician substance abuse, intent to leave practice, depression, and its worst complication: suicide.

Fortunately, doctors can be trained to learn the signs and symptoms – AND how to combat burnout when they are edging towards it. Preventive measures on individual, organizational and leadership levels are available. When physicians learn to employ their own personal anti-burnout strategies, the benefits extend beyond themselves to their patients, families, staff and wider organization, and even the payors.

Pamela A. Pappas, MD, MD(H) is certified in multiple forms of coaching: Executive Coaching, Physician Burnout Prevention, Enneagram Coaching, and the Change Coach model of Dr. Amy Johnson PhD. She is also working towards certification as a Clarity Coach, with Jamie Smart.

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 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.

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

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

To understand trauma-informed breathwork, it is essential to dive deeper into the different aspects of the comprehensive nature of this approach. There are instances in the personal development world where the “trauma-informed” descriptor is used indiscriminately with little regard for what it means and how it is applied. When consciously and responsibly implemented, a trauma-informed approach makes yoga andbreathwork safer and more accessible to all humans. 

Once we understand the profound impact of trauma on the entire person, we realize how difficult it is to heal from trauma without explicitly addressing the body. Ideally, a trauma-informed yoga or breathwork facilitator meets clients exactly where they are to collaboratively create an experience that safely enables the embodiment necessary to allow for healing and transformation. 

All humans can benefit from a trauma-informed approach. It is not just for people whose pain is obvious with notable sources of trauma. Trauma-informed support can also apply to people with a history of depression or anxiety that has created havoc in life. Ultimately, this approach relates to people who identify with experiencing any amount of psychological pain or grief. This is literally a human-informed approach. 

Recognizing the nature of trauma and understanding its impact is where the hope lies—it’s where recovery begins! The foundation of trauma-informed care is a holistic view that offers safety and compassion. It inspires optimism, strength, and relief while enabling people to make long-lasting changes. Facilitating with trauma in mind acknowledges suffering while enabling a safer space for survivors to heal. 

Laura Walton, LMFT, provides  Trauma-Informed Somatic Practices at Optimal You