Therapist for the analytical overthinkers in Bloomington, Indiana.
Hi, I’m Amanda.
I’m a psychologist, coffee/animal/book lover, highly sensitive person, and type A social introvert who will come up with any excuse to create a new spreadsheet.
My comfort space is my thoughts - it’s through my work and own personal therapy that I’ve learned to accept and embrace that my feelings are also important things to pay attention to. If you work with me, I guarantee that you’ll hear me talk about feelings as “data points”.
If you had told me at the age of 18 the number of curve balls that life would throw my way, I would have either laughed or cried. As someone who loves to plan and be able to predict the future, it was never easy for me to have to roll with unexpected punches.
Yet it was also my willingness to change course when my gut was screaming at me to do so that’s allowed me to create a life that truly makes me happy.
I believe that we all come to forks in the roads of life, where we can choose to continue on our current path, one that feels…….meh. Or we can take the incredibly scary and brave step of moving forward in a new direction, and trust that there’s something better for us ahead, even if we can’t see it clearly yet.
It’s at these times in life where I think that we evolve the most, becoming fine-tuned versions of ourselves, as we lean into our values, personalities, and our most authentic selves.
If you’re someone who’s stalled at the fork in the road and wants to take meaningful steps forward, then I’m excited to work with you.
What Therapy Looks Like With Me
The type of work that I love doing as a therapist leads to deeper transformation, where you’re not just symptom-free, but truly living a life that feels like it belongs to you. And that requires practicing curiosity and compassion, both of which I’ll bring into our sessions, and will encourage you to work on as well.
I use the words “I’m curious…..” a lot. To the extent that I might sound like a broken record. Because I genuinely am curious about you and your experiences. I treat everything like a data point - not something to judge, but another piece of information to help us understand what you’re going through.
I can be REALLY patient with your journey, even when you’re feeling anything but that and just want to fix things and make everything better. I completely understand the desire to fix, and yet if it were that easy, you would have already done it.
I have a knack for helping analytical folks to see their own blind spots. I know what it’s like when you’ve been swimming around in the tangled mess of your own thoughts, and you can’t see anything new. I’ll help you to see patterns and develop insights that are hard to find when you feel lost in the weeds.
I ask all of my clients to come to each session with an idea of where they want to start, because I want you to feel empowered to focus on the things that feel most important to you from week to week. This is about your goals, not mine.
Joking and cursing in sessions is welcomed, if that’s authentic to you. You certainly won’t offend me in any way, and humor and expletives can be great methods of self-expression.
I’m not big on structured homework assignments. I’m not going to hand you a new worksheet every week, or ask you to read a bunch of books (unless you want recommendations, in which case I’m happy to provide them).
But I AM going to ask you to work on things outside of session. Most likely, I’ll ask you to work on changing what you’re already doing, rather than adding something new to your plate. It’s kind of like the difference between adding ten squats to your workout routine versus doing one squat very slowly and paying attention to where you feel it in your body. My approach is like the latter.
I believe that therapy is both art and science.
The science piece of therapy is grounded in the techniques, strategies, and concepts that research shows to be most effective. The ones that I use the most in therapy are cognitive-behavioral therapy, emotion-focused therapy, mindfulness, self-compassion, vulnerability, authenticity, and self-care.
In other words, I help my clients to become more aware of both their thoughts and feelings so that they can better understand their experiences and identity what’s actually going to move the needle around their struggles.
The art portion of therapy comes from the fact that no two people are the same - every person comes in with different struggles, and what works for one person might not work for another.
We’ll work together to get to the core of what’s actually going on, and to figure out which strategies and approaches are going to work best for YOU. By the time you finish therapy, I want you to have a good understanding of the approaches, strategies, and perspectives that are most effective for you.
The most important part of therapy is that you feel like you have a safe and supportive space to open up and work through your concerns. That doesn’t mean that therapy is going to always feel easy, but I want you to feel like the hard work is worth it and that it’s moving the needle closer to where you want to be.
My Experiences and Credentials
For those of you interested in my experiences and training, here is the cliff notes version of my CV:
2012 - Graduated from Bowling Green State University with a PhD in clinical psychology.
2011-2012 - Completed an internship at the University of Pittsburgh’s Counseling Center.
2012-2013 - Completed a post-doctoral fellowship at West Virginia University’s Carruth Center for Psychological and Psychiatric Services.
2013-2015 - Worked as a Staff Psychologist at West Virginia University’s Carruth Center for Psychological and Psychiatric Services.
2015 - Present - Worked in private practice as a clinical psychologist in Bloomington, Indiana.