Services: Psychotherapy for Individual Adults
I'd like to help you find joy and satisfaction in your life. For some, this may mean a new way of thinking about things, or learning new skills. For others, it may mean a deep personal exploration that changes you from the inside out, calming anxieties, lifting depression, and allowing your life to be filled with contentment. Frequently, people seek this kind of understanding at times of life transition, such as a new relationship, marriage, divorce, midlife, or times of major loss. But any time you feel the need for a change in your life is good time to seek psychotherapy.
I offer a variety of psychotherapy services for individual adults who answer "yes" to any of these questions:
Are you anxious, worried, agitated, or overwhelmed?
Do you have anxieties about your relationship?
Are you having trouble finding a relationship?
Do you have trouble expressing your feelings? Or knowing your feelings at all?
Do you have a hard time dealing with conflict?
Do you have trouble making decisions?
Do you feel depressed, lonely, sad or angry much of the time?
Are you grieving the loss of a relationship?
Are you at a life transition, and needing help moving to the next stage?
Do you feel that there's "something more" to life that eludes you?
If you answer yes to any of these questions, I can help. It's best to schedule an initial consultation to see if we are a good fit for each other. Call 415-346-6363 or email linda@lindacunningham.com for available appointment times, or a free twenty-minute phone consultation.
I provide Telehealth sessions for clients I have previously met face-to-face, if therapeutically appropriate.
SPECIAL METHODS: Sandplay, EMDR, Dreamwork
Sandplay Therapy
Sandplay is a gentle, deeply meaningful experience for clients who are drawn to it. Using small figures representing every aspect of the world, and a small sandtray painted blue on the bottom and filled with sand, you may be surprised and delighted at the picture of your own internal world that spontaneously forms. Making sandtrays over time is like having “waking dreams” that offer insight and integration of energies and information that were previously inaccessible to you. Symptoms recede, clarity settles in, and serenity and inner stillness suffuse your self-experience. Sandplay is used very successfully with children. However, I have found that in depth work with adults who are interested in this method, the level of healing is quite profound and lasting. Again, use of this method will always be up to you.
EMDR
EMDR is one of the “power tools” of psychotherapy. With this research-proven method, we focus on a specific worry, difficulty or trauma, and delve deep to remove it from the nervous system. EMDR therapy resolves old issues, beliefs, patterns, and fears, as if moving them out of the nervous system where they have been stuck and reverberating. One side effect of EMDR is utter relaxation, and this tends to generalize over time. It is always your choice whether or not to use this method.
Dreamwork
Dreams are like little windows to our inner self, like poems from the soul. Dreams may reveal to us things about ourselves and our relationships that we just aren’t aware of. Even if you don’t usually remember your dreams, an occasional dream, or even an image or feeling from a dream, discussed in therapy, can be very enlightening. I encourage clients who are interested to bring their dreams to therapy.
Mindfulness and Meditation
Mindfulness techniques have proven to be some of the most effective tools we have in psychotherapy. Mindfulness helps to heal anxiety, depression and trauma. By gently focusing on your experience in the present moment--without judgment--we explore, deepen, and resolve old issues.