CBT-Based Therapy with a Trauma-Informed, Parts-Focused Lens
Do you find yourself constantly trying to stay in control, yet rarely feeling truly at ease?
Maybe you are often the person others rely on. You may find yourself keeping the peace, anticipating other people’s needs, or trying to meet expectations while gradually losing touch with your own.
Perfectionism, people pleasing, self criticism, overthinking, and the effects of difficult past experiences can become patterns that shape how you relate to yourself and others.
Patterns that may once have helped you feel safe, connected, or in control can later leave you feeling exhausted, stuck, or disconnected from yourself.
In therapy, we approach these patterns with curiosity rather than judgment. Instead of asking only, “How do I get rid of this?”, we also explore: Where did this come from? What has it been trying to protect? And do I still need it in the same way today?
My approach is grounded in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and integrates mindfulness, Schema Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and trauma-informed principles.
Together, we may explore different parts of your experience, such as the inner critic, the caretaker, the perfectionist, or the part that carries fear or old pain.
Rather than treating these parts as problems to eliminate, we work to understand how they developed and what they may have been trying to do for you.
This process can help reduce shame and create a deeper understanding of your own story. What once felt like evidence that something was “wrong” with you can begin to make sense as an understandable response to what you have lived through.
As that understanding grows, you can begin to relate to yourself with greater compassion, loosen patterns that no longer serve you, and reconnect with the parts of yourself that may have been pushed aside beneath roles, expectations, and ways of coping.
The goal is not to become a different person.
It is to understand yourself more deeply and create greater freedom to live, relate, and make choices in ways that feel more authentic to you.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
➔ What is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)?
CBT is an evidence-based form of therapy that can help you better understand the relationship between your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, while developing practical skills to cope with difficulties such as anxiety, low mood, stress, perfectionism, and self-criticism.
Many of the beliefs we hold about ourselves, other people, and the world begin to develop through our early experiences and relationships.
For example, repeated criticism, rejection, or pressure to meet certain expectations may contribute to beliefs such as “I’m not good enough,” “I have to get everything right,” or “I need to keep others happy in order to be accepted.”
Over time, these beliefs can become so familiar that we may no longer notice how strongly they influence the way we interpret situations, respond emotionally, and make choices.
One of the central principles of CBT is that thoughts, emotions, physical responses, and behaviors are interconnected.
The meaning we give to an experience can influence how we feel and how we respond. For instance, the thought “I’m going to fail” may increase anxiety and lead to avoidance, which can then reinforce the original belief.
In therapy, we learn to notice these patterns with greater curiosity and awareness. Rather than simply treating certain thoughts as “wrong,” we explore where they come from, how accurate or helpful they are today, and whether there may be other ways of understanding the situation.
Through this process, you can begin to develop more balanced ways of relating to yourself and your experiences, experiment with new behaviors, and gradually loosen patterns that may once have served a purpose but are no longer helping you live in the way you want.
➔ What to expect?
An important part of therapy is developing a deeper understanding of yourself and making sense of your own story.
Together, we explore your thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and recurring patterns, while also looking at how your beliefs and ways of coping may have developed through past experiences and relationships.
This can help you begin to connect the different pieces of your experience and understand why certain situations, emotions, or patterns affect you in the way they do.
Self-awareness is not simply about identifying what is “wrong.” It is about approaching your experience with curiosity and understanding.
As you begin to recognize the beliefs, triggers, and patterns that shape your responses, you can create more space between what happens to you and how you choose to respond.
CBT provides a range of evidence-based tools and strategies that can support this process.
Depending on your individual needs, our work may include identifying and evaluating unhelpful thinking patterns, developing more effective coping strategies, behavioral experiments, exposure-based techniques, or learning new ways of responding to anxiety and difficult emotions.
For example, when anxiety leads to avoidance, we may gradually work toward approaching feared situations in a safe and manageable way.
When self-critical or rigid beliefs are keeping you stuck, we can explore where these beliefs came from, how they influence you today, and whether there are more balanced and helpful ways of relating to yourself and your experiences.
Over time, this combination of deeper understanding and practical change can help you loosen patterns that no longer serve you, build greater confidence in your ability to navigate difficult experiences, and make choices that feel more intentional and aligned with what matters to you.
Our work is always tailored to your individual needs and goals. My role is to offer a safe, collaborative space where you can feel supported, understood, and gently challenged as we work together toward meaningful change.
An Integrative Approach
➔ An Integrative, Trauma-Informed Approach
Although Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) provides an important foundation for my work, my approach to therapy is integrative. I do not believe that every difficulty can be understood or worked through using one method alone, because different experiences often require different ways of exploring and processing them.
Depending on your individual needs, our work may integrate elements from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Schema Therapy, Internal Family Systems and parts work, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Mindfulness, somatic awareness, guided imagery, and creative or art-based exercises.
Sometimes therapy may involve exploring the thoughts, beliefs, and behavioral patterns that keep repeating in your life.
We may look at the assumptions you have developed about yourself, other people, or relationships, and begin to understand how these beliefs were shaped by earlier experiences.
At other times, working only at the level of thoughts may not feel enough. We may explore the different “parts” of you that show up in certain situations, such as an inner critic, a perfectionistic part, a caretaker, a frightened part, or a part that has learned to stay constantly alert.
Rather than trying to silence or eliminate these parts, we approach them with curiosity and compassion, exploring how they developed, what they may be trying to protect, and what they might need today.
Mindfulness can support this process by helping you notice thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations as they arise, without immediately reacting to them or judging them.
Developing this kind of awareness can create more space between an internal experience and your response to it, allowing you to relate to yourself with greater clarity and compassion.
Because emotional experiences are not held only in our thoughts, we may also bring attention to what is happening in the body.
Somatic awareness can help us notice sensations such as tension, heaviness, restlessness, numbness, or changes in breathing, and begin to understand how the body responds to stress, fear, relationships, and past experiences.
Guided imagery and visual exercises can sometimes offer another way of accessing experiences that may be difficult to reach through conversation alone.
Similarly, creative and art-based exercises can allow emotions, memories, needs, or different parts of the self to be explored in ways that do not depend entirely on finding the “right” words.
The purpose of integrating these approaches is not to use as many techniques as possible. It is to create a therapeutic process that responds to you as a whole person.
Sometimes we may need to understand.
Sometimes we may need to feel.
Sometimes we may need to notice what the body is communicating.
Sometimes we may need to meet a part of ourselves with compassion rather than trying to change it.
And sometimes we may need to experiment with a completely new way of responding.
By working across these different levels, therapy can help you make deeper sense of your experiences, understand the patterns that have shaped you, and gradually reconnect with parts of yourself that may have been hidden beneath fear, roles, expectations, or ways of coping that once helped you feel safe.