Develop a new, healthy perspective.
Resolve past issues and move forward.
Feel empowered, not powerless.
Learn to reflect instead of overreacting.
Do you feel stuck, hopeless, and isolated?
Are you not living up to your full potential?
Are life’s difficulties running the show of your life?
Healing from childhood wounds, depression, trauma, and the overwhelming difficulties in your everyday life is possible.
It’s time for you to move forward. Counseling can help you to heal and grow. Together we can break through the obstacles and pain that have held you back and create a solid foundation from which to build a strong, confident, and happy version of you.
Life can be challenging. Especially when you’ve had a difficult past. Troubles from long ago often stay with us throughout our adult life. If not resolved, they can result in anxiety, depression, addiction, dysfunctional relationships, and other hardships.
If you were wounded emotionally in childhood and did not get your emotional and physical needs met, you may be experiencing painful feelings, uncomfortable body sensations, and negative beliefs — frequently accompanied with a sense of powerlessness.
I understand. I’ve been there myself. From years of my own healing, growth, education, and clinical experience, I’ve learned how best to connect with my clients and support them on their healing journey.
With my help, you can heal from your past and become the person you deserve to be.
Do you often relive painful past experiences? Do you feel like you’ve lost control of your life?
Therapy can help you develop a new, healthy perspective on past events and become unstuck in the present.
Are unresolved past issues causing unwanted behaviors, beliefs, emotions, and urges?
Attachment injury and trauma counseling can help you to understand how past events may be impacting your daily life and teach you to build coping skills and move forward.
Are you feeling disheartened, discouraged, hopeless, and isolated?
Depression counseling can help to lighten the load of environmental, biological, and circumstantial factors and regain your power.
Is anxiety taking over your life? Does it feel like you can’t control it no matter how hard you try?
Therapy can help to uncover the underlying causes of your worries and fears, learn how to relax, and look at situations in a new, less frightening way. You can develop better coping mechanisms and problem-solving skills.
Hi. I’m Ilyssa Swartout. I’m a licensed psychologist, devoted to helping you through difficult periods and to maximizing your potential. I’m dedicated to helping others find within themselves a deep and lasting sense of wholeness, worth, and esteem.
I have been trained and mentored by a variety of experts and luminaries in the field of psychotherapy/
counseling. For more than 20 years, I worked with James Bugental, Ph.D., the founder of Humanistic Psychotherapy. It was through his mentorship and consultation, that I learned how to be present with myself and give myself permission to heal from difficulties from my past. This was central to preparing me to be an empathic and effective therapist.
I have also been trained by Shirley Jean Schmidt, the founder of The Developmental Needs Meeting Strategy (DNMS). Since 2008, I have been learning and improving my DNMS skills to help people who were wounded in childhood. Much of the education in this model of therapy was through my own personal work.
I am a certified in-depth therapist, and I have written a chapter in Unearthing the Moment: Mindful Applications of Existential-Humanistic and Transpersonal Psychotherapy. In this book, I shared my applications of existential-humanistic psychotherapy helping to express the voices of incarcerated women and speaking to the transformation of suffering through active, mindful presence.
I am also a certified Gestalt therapy practitioner and trained in Brainspotting and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), all effective modes of therapy to help people resolve trauma, addiction, depression, “stuckness” and more, by engaging all of who they are. I have been studying and learning these counseling techniques since the early 2000s. I am now an EMDR consultant, helping other therapists learn this effective modality of therapy.
I work on an individual and group basis with adults and couples. Learn more about me and my counseling philosophy.
You might be initially hesitant to seek out help and support for personal matters, but when you do, you will feel confident that you are taking a courageous first step toward getting to a better place and being a better you. If you’re interested in becoming a better, happier, more fulfilled version of you, get started and please contact me today!