Welcome to Natura Psychotherapy, PLLC

Starting sessions.

So many things in life can keep us focused on what we should be doing more of, or what we could be doing better. But these pressures can contribute to anxiety, and keep us attuned to the stressors in our life. While we all have values and goals we want to work towards in life, sometimes we learn protective behaviors, usually at a young age, that may have helped us in that moment, but now fuel our anxiety or negative thinking in a world already filled with stressors. In therapy, we’ll work from your worldview, your values, and learn your relationship to events that may contribute to anxiety so that healing may begin. After all, although everyone lives with some level of anxiety and fear, you are different from anyone else, and we want to validate your story. Though your goals and needs in therapy might not be clear until after therapy has begun, here are a couple of example areas that I typically start with clients.

Coping Mechanisms

What do we do if we are already feeling dysregulated? It can be a relief to be able to soothe anxious thoughts in the moment, and calm ourselves using emotional regulation. In therapy, we’ll discuss how you learned to cope with stressors and unwanted emotions throughout your life, which coping mechanisms work and don’t work for you currently, and add a couple to your toolbox for you to have moving forward. 

Emotional Connection

If we want to improve the connection to our emotional experiences, then we need to practice building that muscle, and work towards fluency in our felt emotions. After all, if we can’t identify and give language to a given emotional experience, how can we validate it accurately? If at some point we learned that some emotions are “okay” to feel or “good,” and others as not so much, then what do we end up doing with the unacceptable emotions? If we tend to disconnect from, ignore, push through, or avoid, then we want to find out how they might currently be manifesting, as they still will affect our decisions and wellbeing. 

Relationship Patterns

Relationship anxiety can occur in many different forms depending on a number of factors. We’ll explore relationship patterns throughout life that inform attachment style, anxiety, and communication, all without judgement. Afterwards, we can apply this to build insight into current relationships, and slowly work towards what you want to see happen in your relationships.

Communication Skills

How do we communicate during difficult conversations? More specifically, how do we communicate honestly, but in ways that others are most likely to receive? Centered around Non-Violent Communication, we’ll explore the connection between what you’re feeling, what you need, and how that gets delivered to others.

Somatic Reactions to Stress

Sometimes our bodies hold onto stress, or are in a stress cycle that is uncomfortable, and might not match the environment we are in. We will spend time learning about the mind-body connection from the practical (how diet, sleep, and exercise affect emotions) to the more specific (understanding fight or flight in more detail), and how to practice grounding and regulation skills can be useful.