Get to Know Valeria

Therapist in Austin, TX

Therapy for ADHD
 

When you are living with ADHD, whether diagnosed or undiagnosed, the daily struggle of staying on task, managing your emotions, and keeping it all together is extremely draining. You probably feel like you are not doing enough. You might  have the nagging commentary that you are not keeping up, you are not good enough, and you are failing... these words that you heard people tell you over and over and over again.  

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ADHD is often diagnosed with other mental health conditions, such as autism, anxiety, and depression. This can be lonely and isolating, believing that no one understands what you are living or how your brain works. 

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This weight feels even heavier if you are a woman pushing though while trying to keep up with a demanding life, needing support, and feeling yourself stretched thin. You might be feeling isolated and misunderstood. 

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It is easy to feel not just overwhelmed, but depressed and alone. The isolation of such a complicated emotional juggling act quickly builds up. You don’t have to let distractions, time blindness, and executive dysfunction decide the course of your life. I will help you work through the challenges, offering the support of a guide, cheerleader, and emotional support  through both education on skills and effective application of those skills into your life.

Therapy with me is a place to connect and feel understood by someone with a similar lived experience. I will show up authentically and validate your experiences while also offering strategies to cope. This might look like a psychiatric referral, exploration into and practice of behavioral changes, shifts in mindset, or plans of action to create support networks. We will look at how best to integrate techniques such as body doubling, visual cues, and alarms to support your change process.

You can be ready for me to show up with curiosity, patience, and encouragement, as we work together. Where it is useful to your process of self discovery and change, I offer my own first hand knowledge and experience as I myself am diagnosed with ADHD. I may offer insight on how my own journey with ADHD. With such a complicated diagnosis, it is also super important to remember to find the humor in it. Together we will normalize the experience of having ADHD and use this "disability" to our advantage.

Therapy for Trauma
 

Living through trauma isn't easy. Surviving can be even more difficult at times. You might look completely fine on the outside, laughing, talking, going to work, hanging out with people, and going about life like anyone else. But on the inside, your brain is struggling to figure out who you can trust, who is out to do harm… always waiting for something bad to happen. Sometimes the smallest things will set it off. A sound, a smell, a place, somebody saying something a certain way will bring it all back. You are right back in the place where you were hurt. When it happens you might be physically in the room, but your body and mind are elsewhere. You are in fight, flight, freeze, or fawn.

Surviving trauma isn’t enough to help you live a fulfilling, connected, and joyful life. To be fully alive, you have to be able to be present and to overcome the instinct to treat any moment of uncertainty with fear and panic. Making this change can be challenging if you are juggling other adversities as well. It can feel lonely, isolating you from not only enjoyment of daily life, but other people who are important in your life. Now is the best time to change this cycle. Your life can be yours once again.

The exhaustion from being constantly on guard is not true safety. I offer a path toward safety by creating a calm, quiet, and kind place to connect and feel understood. I will show up as myself, giving my experiences and knowledge to our work while we face the big or scary emotions, using proven techniques to heal from your trauma. I weave together Somatic Experiencing, Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, Internal Family Systems (parts work), and compassionate reflection into our work. When emotions are triggered or you find yourself in a state of heightened emotion, we will use the polyvagal chart to guide our work that day, assessing the best steps for calming, regulating, and recentering. Identifying the ways you have come to cope with the effects of trauma will guide our work too. These might be adaptive or maladaptive, such as using substances to forget the pain. We will focus on the driving force behind those behaviors and will create, together, effective practices for finding safety, comfort, and emotional stability.

Though it will be challenging, I am with you the whole way. You can trust me to give you the care and guidance to face the feelings with courage, drawing on your personal strengths to shape the response. Making this kind of change requires careful compassion on both our parts. We will go at a pace that honors your particular needs while staying the course to overcome the stifling blanket of fear that trauma puts over your life. Let’s get started in creating your path toward a free and joyful life.

Therapy for Mood Disorders

Living with the weight of big emotions can make it seem like they have a mind of their own. Some days are manageable, but others feel like hitting a brick wall before even getting out of bed. Chores don’t get done, texts and calls go unanswered, and not to mention getting enough energy up to take a shower. When those days pile up, like the clothes on the floor or the dishes in the sink, it starts to feel like it is impossible to get out of the mood cycle that you are in. When you are alone, feeling stuck and isolated, it is hard to see the way out. But you don’t have to find the way through alone. At first it might feel like you are alone and your support system doesn’t understand, but I will meet you with compassion, curiosity, and understanding. 

The keys to a future of your making begins with learning your own patterns: figuring out what makes things worse, noticing when your mood is starting to change, and making routines that actually help. Like anyone else, as you are making progress you are bound to stumble. Setbacks are part of the process, but it doesn’t mean you’re broken. It means you’re dealing with something real, and sometimes getting through an ordinary day is more of an accomplishment than anyone else realizes. Building on those kinds of successes is another key to changing the deeper emotional roadblocks on your journey. Don’t let those obstacles stop you completely. They are only bumps on the road to change; temporary slow downs on the path to a better life that can be overcome when we combine our energy to work through them.   

When you are ready to start therapy, I take your commitment seriously. I am here to support you through the steps ahead with a kind, compassionate, patient, and focused approach. I draw on techniques from Somatic Experiencing, Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, and Internal Family Systems which will help provide the frame to base our strategies for change. You are a whole person, and not your symptoms. We will find strategies that fit who you are and what you need. The most important part of the work is the strong, stable, and secure foundation that we will build in our relationship. Our relationship will foster a collaborative space for healing. Together we will transform the patterns that led you to therapy, finding balance, joy, and fulfilment.