You worthy of new beginnings.
— Morgan Harper Nichols
The Stories—I want to know the stories of what happened to you, the stories you were born into. I want to understand the origin of your challenges, when things started to fall apart, when the cracks showed themselves. I want to understand your stories of strength and healing.
Whatever the fears, pains, losses, and disruptions, the cracks in your life are messages from your deepest self seeking new ways to cultivate connection, strength, and resilience.”
The Therapeutic Process — With respect, collaboration, and safe harbor, I want to help you discover the stepping stones on your path into strength, resilience, health, healing, and connection. I want to help you cultivate new ways of living a coherent and connected life. Together, we will explore:
- Connection — Do you feel safely and securely held? It is more important than ever to have what Kohut called, “a rich surround of relationship—” a network of friends within which you can thrive, create, connect, and be your true self.
- Relational Attunement and Repair — The possibilities of relational attunement and repair are everywhere. Together we cultivate essential elements that support both self-repair and relational repair, including the emotional intelligence, co-regulation, and attuned communication.
- Heart-Mind-Body Coherence — Coherence is the intelligent flow of awareness and insight that we experience once the heart-mind-body are brought into balance and coherence. Coherence includes the cultivation of connecting with self, others, the proximate environment without a move into your survival responses.
- Somatic Intelligence — Where in your body do you hold tension? What emotions is your body holding onto? Grief, anger, abandonment, righteousness, fear? Where in your body do you hold strength, connection, courage? It is important that we learn how to acknowledge our distress, reach out for support, and tap into our inner resources.
- Beliefs — A great deal of emotional suffering stems from the inability to make sense of our lives. Together, we discover your belief systems of how life (should) work. How are these beliefs impacting your life now?
“To live happily and healthily in all the turmoil that progress brings requires cultivating new perspectives and lifestyle choices. The powers of creating a better tomorrow are contained in the moments of today.”
About Dr. Patricia
Patricia D. Raya, Ph.D., LPC, is a Licensed Professional Counselor who incorporates an integrated and functional approach to psychotherapy. She works with individuals experiencing:
- Acute and chronic burnout, stress, and trauma
- Relationship and communication problems
- Anxiety and depression
- Grief and loss
- Process addictions
- Emotional eating and low self-esteem
- Life transitions, such retirement and early adulthood launch
- Crises of meaning, connection, and spirituality.
Dr. Patricia brings a unique background that blends together her psychotherapy practices with 40 years experience as an educator, corporate leader, entrepreneur, and coach. She works collaboratively to help patients enlist their inner resources to quiet the inner critic, to love the unlovable within, and to discover the strength and resilience of their wholehearted self.
“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.
-Carl Rogers”
Dr. Patricia integrates evidence-based therapeutic practices to personalize the therapeutic approach for each patient.
- Narrative Therapy
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
- Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT)
- Interpersonal/Relational Therapy
- Existential-Humanistic Wisdom Traditions
- Polyvagal Therapy and Heart Math
- Solution Focused
- Gestalt Therapy
- Positive Psychology
- Mindfulness-Contemplative Practices
- EMDR
Dr. Patricia earned her Ph.D. from Saybrook University in Humanistic Existential Psychology with an emphasis in Consciousness studies and her Masters in Clinical Mental Health from The Chicago School of Professional Psychology.
Together, let us cultivate and reclaim your healthy and joyful connection with yourself and others.
