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Wellness for Modern Minds

Telehealth Counseling Serving California and Illinois

 

 

Mood Issues

If you’re feeling down, unmotivated, worried, or perhaps emotions cycle all over the place, therapy can help find the patterns and build new ones.  Therapy is a safe place to process painful experiences. Learn to regulate your body from stressed to rest. Reprogram unhelpful thinking styles and break limiting beliefs. Therapy helps you move through challenging emotions to live the life you value.

Distraction, Addiction, & Tech/Gaming Issues

If you’ve feeling scattered, got too many great ideas and tabs open to finish the responsibilities you need to; therapy can help. Maybe substance use has become more than you can handle. Perhaps, you’re up all night gaming or just can stop scrolling on your phone.  Learn to hack back your life. Therapy can give you the skills and strategies to get back in balance.

 

Trauma and Recovery

Surviving trauma can feel like life has fallen to pieces. Therapy cannot erase trauma but creates a safe place to decrease painful feelings. Learn healthy coping strategies to reduce the severity and frequency of triggers. Therapy can guide a person to recovery and finding inner strength.  Integrating piece after piece from surviving to thriving. Incorporating Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing (EMDR) or Brainspotting can also aid recovery. EMDR and Brainspotting are designed to resolved unprocessed memories by targeting the brain’s innate healing system. It accelerates healing and brain growth over talk therapy alone. 

Hello! I’m James

Licensed Clinical Social Worker

I’m a clinical social worker first and grew in my career working with communities experiencing systemic oppression and layers of trauma. I believe that as we embark on our healing journey, it ripples into the communities around us and changes the world.

My interests overlap my love for therapy. I’m an avid plant lover and much like my work, I love to witness growth. I’m a baby yogi and believe that movement is medicine. I love gaming and know that we also can level up our lives. As a film buff, we can also become the heroes in our stories. 

 

My Expertise

Emotional Regulation

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Every day we are bombarded with hundreds of emotionally provoking stimuli.  They can leave us feeling down or on edge.  Our flight or flight system gets activated often requiring a response. Learn to slow down between feeling and reaction to choose the action which best serves you.

Thought Reprogramming

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That inner critic can be loud sometimes. Our minds are a super computer and often the default programming leans towards negative thinking. Learn to notice the patterns and stories your mind tells you. Challenges these thoughts and create the narative you want to tell yourself.

Psychedelic Safety & Integration

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Many people use substances in their pursuit of happiness. You may find yourself wanting to be safer or exploring reducing or stopping use. With the advances in research and pending decriminalization, you might also be exploring psychedelic medicine for you own healing. Therapy is a place to plan safer & habits as well as a place to process and integrate non-ordinary experiences you may have had.

Mindfulness & Mental Flexibility

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Develop the ability to continue moving towards your goals despite the challenges and difficulties life throws at you.  Learn skills that equip you to tap into the power of the present moment. We often spend much of our energy trying to avoid experiencing our emotions whereas to move through them we must fully feel.

Goal Manifesting

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Imagine a future where the problem that has you looking at this sentence has gone away.  What is a day in that life like?  Set a direction and we can determine what steps to take, little by little, to manifest it into reality.  Therapy helps turn your dreams into goals. We’ll break goals into actions. Step by step, you’ll start building momentum forward.

Interpersonal Attachment

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Therapy creates a safe place where we can be secure to be ourselves. The therapeutic dynamic reveals blind spots, repeating patterns, and mirrors how we show up in relationship with others and our self.  Over time therapy helps not just achieve healthier relationships with others but ultimately builds a secure relationship with our own self.

Peak Performance & ADHD Support

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Are you living with ADHD? Maybe it’s simply you can manage to keep focus with so many distractions at hand.  Those deadlines are approaching and those all nighters just aren’t healthy anymore.  Therapy can equip you with the skills and strategies to start making progress on those things you want to do.

Gaming/Tech Addiction

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Modern advances bring modern problems. Media and marketing have used psychology to hack our attention, get to watch that ad, click that button, and keep scrolling. We’ve been in isolation and it’s hard to stop binging whole seasons in a sitting or to log off and play that next round. Therapy can help hack back your attention and level up your life.

LGBTQ+ Inclusive

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Wherever you are on the beautiful spectrum of human experience, therapy is a safe place to be yourself. Coping with discrimination and oppression, coming out and becoming your “authentic”self in the face of societal pressures can lead to higher levels of depression, anxiety, substance use, and other mental health concerns for LGBTQ+ community. Our practice is sex postitive, affirming, and inclusive of all lifestyles including nonmonogamous, poly, and kinky folx.

My Approach & Values

I’m a modern minded therapist and nerd out over keeping up with growing knowledge in the field. I love the creative challenge of therapy more. I love integrating these theories and teaching them in a way that connects with your story, interests, and experiences. I’m pretty down to earth, keep things real, and can also use some colorful language (if that’s your preference.) 

 I am a social justice advocate and BIPOC ally. I believe the broken systems we deal with have a great impact on our mental health. I am part of the LGBTQ+ community, sex positive and love working with non-monogamous, poly, and kinky folx.  I believe in decolonizing therapy, honoring the traditions where this legacy came from, and separating healing from capitalism.

"Day by day, in every way, I am getting better and better."

~ Emil Coué

"Life gives us one step at a time. The next step is revealed when we take the one in front of us"

~Charles Staples

"You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life."

~Steve Jobs

Contact Me

Ask a question or book an appointment below. For emergencies call a trusted support, crisis line, 911, or visit your nearest hospital.

4 + 15 =

(424) 284-9325

California (Los Angeles) and Illinois (Chicago) Virtual Video Sessions

james@solsticementalhealth.com

Proud Member of TherapyDen