INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOTHERAPY SERVICES

Online therapy available upon request with established clients. In-person individual and couple therapy is available at my Boca Raton location.

Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT)

The goals of EFIT are to offer corrective emotional experiences that positively impact models of self and other and shape stable, lasting change. As a certified Emotionally Focused Individual therapist, I help choreograph transformative moments where clients feel safe to feel and share their feelings in a vulnerable way so they can process them and no longer be weighed down by them, but find a new sense of positivity, lightness, and balance.

Anxiety and Stress reduction

By looking at the factors that influence anxiety and determining the best way to counteract those tendencies, we remind ourselves that we are not the anxiety or stress we are feeling, it is just something we are experiencing. I assist clients in identifying thoughts and feelings that lead to anxiety and stress and offers practical and proven strategies to reduce and overcome anxiety.

Depression

Depression has profound and varied impacts. It can be a hidden illness.  People can seem upbeat, but on the inside be struggling with depression.  Though antidepressant medication is often needed to alleviate the symptoms enough for therapy to be helpful, most often psychotherapy is needed for healing from depression. I use multiple strategies, from therapeutic to nutritional to physical (exercise does help depression), to help people overcome depression and get back to enjoying life.

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing)

Our natural tendency is towards healing. But when we repeat negative stories about ourselves over and over, we develop synaptic connections that grow stronger over time. Our negative thoughts become habits and it takes effort to develop new, supportive habits. Over 30 studies have demonstrated that EMDR speeds healing and helps replace negative beliefs with more positive, helpful beliefs. EMDR includes grounding and mindfulness techniques and a series of bilateral eye movements thought to mimic the processing and restoration that happens during REM or deep sleep. More information about EMDR can be found on the EMDIRA.org website.

Trauma Resolution using (TIR)

Trauma, as well as other more ordinary unhappy experiences, often leave behind some unpleasant emotional reminders of what we’ve been through.  Traumatic Incident Reduction (TIR) is a therapy that thoroughly disposes of the painful reminders and symptoms of past negative experience.  As a certified TIR facilitator, I help clients resolve residual anger, anxiety, depression, or guilt that so often sabotage the happiness and wellbeing of those who have experienced loss, abuse and injury. Learn more about TIR here.

Grief and loss

From my own personal experience of losing our first child at birth and my subsequent journey through and research about grief, I. feel a deep sense of compassion for being with people in their grief, and helping them identify and process their emotions and move through their loss.

Parenting

Utilizing parenting resources such as John Gottman’s Raising An Emotionally Intelligent Child, Jim Faye’s Love and Logic and Kathryn Kovl’s  Redirecting Children’s Behavior, parents are able to learn and implement positive and productive parenting styles that build on strengths, encourage independence and a healthy self esteem.

ADHD

As the parent and spouse of family members who deal with ADHD, I have developed the knowledge and skill set to help individuals make the most of the way their brain functions.  I emphasize solution focused concepts to accentuate the surprising benefits of having a brain that thinks differently.

Testimonial

Having worked with Elizabeth for many years at the Samaritan Counseling Center of South Florida, I found her to be a sensitive and empathic therapist. Her extensive training as a pastor, psychotherapist, in nutrition, and her experience as a yoga instructor provides her clients with a holistic mind-body-spirit approach to healing. I recommend her to anyone seeking help with mental health or relationship problems or someone seeking spiritual direction.

C. Lewis, FL Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist

PSYCHOTHERAPY SERVICES FOR RELATIONSHIPS

Emotionally Focused Couples therapy  (EFT)

I am a certified EFT therapist for couples, individuals and families. The goal of EFT Couples or Individual therapy is to help clients create or restore a secure emotional bond that leads to more satisfaction, connection and trust in relationships. Knowing that our early life experiences in our family of origin provide a framework for how we operate in relationships, I am focused on helping clients process and heal from emotional wounds and then identify and break free from long standing patterns that maintain distress in relationships and families. I help couples find new ways to connect that promote intimacy and wholeness. You can learn more about Emotionally Focused therapy at ICEEFT.com.

Premarital Counseling and Wedding Officiating

As an ordained Presbyterian Pastor (USA), Elizabeth is licensed to perform weddings.  She enjoys doing premarital counseling with couples and then weaving their relationship dreams into their wedding service.  Elizabeth conducts a number of interfaith weddings and enjoys helping these couples find their way to relational and spiritual growth together.

Parenting

Utilizing parenting resources such as John Gottman’s Raising An Emotionally Intelligent Child, Jim Faye’s Love and Logic, Kathryn Kovl’s Redirecting Children’s Behavior, and Dan Siegel’s Parenting From the Inside Out: How a Deeper Self-Understanding Can Help You Raise Children Who Thrive, parents are able to learn and implement positive and productive parenting styles that build on strengths, encourage independence and a healthy self esteem.

SPIRITUAL SERVICES

Clergy stress

As an ordained Pastor with 10 years of experience pastoring in local churches, I bring my personal and professional experience and the fruits of my research, including my Masters thesis (about how, without examination, clergy can unconsciously bring their family of origin role into their job at church) into my work with church people.  I work with pastors, staff and church leaders to help them maintain healthy boundaries, restore and recover from stress, and minister out of abundant love and mercy.

Spiritual Direction

There are times when a crisis strikes and we realize we are in pain, or are experiencing loss, or realize we are on a threshold and are being called into a truer, more authentic way of being.  Life has a way of making us aware of our deep desire for connection with God, or the Source of Love, our Higher Power, or whatever we call our Ground of Being. As a Spiritual Director, my task is to listen, to pay attention to what is said, and sometimes to what is not said.  I work with the whole person – body, mind and spirit- and support the directee as they discern what is happening in their lives and their soul.  Spiritual direction is a practice of slowing down, of reflecting, of asking big questions about our desires, our wounds, our values, and our relationships to help us to discover and trust in the truth and wisdom that lies within us. My job is to be present and to take time to be with the directee as their truth and their deepening connection is revealed. 

As a graduate of a two year program in Contemplative Spirituality at the Center for Action and Contemplation, and from my years as a Pastor and Licensed Psychotherapist, I am honored to sit with people who desire to spiritually reflect. I strive to help clients explore how to live and move out of their deepest, truest, most centered selves.

“Tend only to the birth in you and you will find all goodness and all consolation, all delight, all being and all truth.” Meister Eckhart

Premarital Counseling and Wedding Officiating

As an ordained Presbyterian Pastor (USA), I am licensed to perform weddings.  I enjoy doing premarital counseling with couples and then weaving their relationship dreams into their wedding service.  I conduct a number of interfaith weddings and enjoy helping these couples find their way to relational and spiritual growth together.