Sheila Graves

My hopes are to be a soft place to fall when discussing life's challenges, difficult topics, painful thoughts & dashed hopes. As a 'young at heart' woman in my 50's, I'm a survivor of many of life's unexpected difficult high & low roads filled with detours, switchbacks & gotten lost trying to get myself over life's mountains. As a daughter, sister, friend, girlfriend, wife, mother, homemaker, older student, divorcee & ultimately becoming a compassionate solution-focused strength's based therapist after learning how powerful talk-therapy is. I'm familiar with life's sudden wake-up calls w/missed signs, getting comfortable & days/weeks become months/years w/o noticing how I'd drifted into patterns that didn't take into consideration my own wants, wishes & needs. I've been there. We all have histories where we made good, bad, convenient & self-defeating decisions based on what we knew. We've also been alongside others who may have done the same & negatively impacted you on your journey. Experience & wisdom can be incredible teachers. Understanding our truths of 'how-when-what-how-why' of it all can be the glue that sets us free from repeating/role-modeling what hurt/deterred us most. My innate curiosity, successes & failures has led me to find the honest answers I needed most and why I became a therapist. I earned my License as Clinical Social Worker with a focus on Adult Mental Health & Addiction. I've honed my passion, purpose & skills to help shorten the learning curve & needless suffering of those facing the slippery slopes when life's difficult moments/transitions were around corners we couldn't see. It isn't always easy to make the decision to seek talk therapy, go on to navigate health insurance & make your 1st appt. I get it. I've been in your position off/on in my life & been a requirement of my education/licensure. It wasn't always as expected & the 'match' was off. This is why I've done my best to be myself in my profile in how I voice my thoughts, experience and natural way of speaking. If you find yourself drawn to my style & personality, it will likely bring you relief that I'm approachable, non-judgmental & a great listener. I ask that you bring a list of questions of things you'd like to know more about me to rule in/out that I'm a safe place to share emotionally intimate details of your life's journey in areas you feel challenged by. I'll ask you about what you'd like to work on, why it's important & then onto what your unique wants-wishes-needs are as goals to work towards. I've been told by clients that I'm personable, transparent, honestly interested in building the bridge from where you find yourself to where you want to be & passionate about keeping it simple. I don't push, poke or prod you to go into areas you're not comfortable with yet & follow your lead as we work together till you feel empowered to go onto the next phase of your life w/new knowledge & abilities to face it head on. I've lived, been challenged, sought therapy to navigate it all & better understand it myself. I became educated to learn the book-smart side of mental health & addiction to blend into real life so I can help others lift the veil to find life's aha moments, dare to rethink things, learn & build the bridge to where you want to be. When you know more, you can go onto to do, become & face what's around corners much easier, quicker w/o as much shrapnel left in it's wake so you can get on with things. My treatment methods -- Acceptance and commitment (ACT) Let's focus on now & looking forward to building the bridge from where you are to the other side where your best self awaiting discovery. Figuring things out doesn't have to be complicated, intense or based in trauma. Life has a way of creating false beliefs that we aren't good enough, don't try hard enough or want it bad enough. We are so hard on ourselves......if others could hear the things we say to ourselves, they'd be shocked. Let's work together in learning how to be vulnerably honest with ourselves, find the 'why' behind the need to be perfect, people pleasing, helping others before ourselves ...... guilt & isolating shame. It's much more doable than many of us think to tackle limiting beliefs based in anxiety of shoulds, have to's & someone else's expectations of us. -- Attachment-based Family dynamics, roles, communication, decision making & discipline are learned and passed onto generation after generation. But what if it's dysfunctional, abusive, lacks emotional connection or you've been cast as the problem. Attachment Theory is amazingly helpful to learn, provides answers to questions of why & allows you to relook, redefine & re-identify your strengths, resiliency & ability to navigate through what was once a maze. You will learn how to break the cycle of emotional-mental-verbal abuse to build or rebuild the love & connection of the family you wanted, deserved & want to create. It's all connected. -- Child Parent Psychotherapy Being a parent & a child doesn't always come with experience and we do the best we can with what we know......until it stops working. A parent-child relationship can be a ball of yarn with some tangled sections and just needs some unraveling, smoothing & re-rolling with a better understanding of each person's wants-wishes-needs. It makes all the difference in understanding how the relationship began to unravel, entangled & no longer works without arguing, feeling unappreciated, unwanted that can lead to one or both giving up. But it's not how the other ever wanted it to be....... it just slowly happens. Let's work together to lift the veil on the unknowns, misunderstandings and onto what we want-need-wish for most. -- Humanistic I am a soft place to fall when discussing difficult life events to move through and forward. I have been client-centered, empathetic & non-judgmental in my approach for 20+ years when working with others. Humanistic therapy meets you where you're at as we address personal issues related to anxiety, depression, addiction, interpersonal conflict & family relationship struggles. It's solution focused & helps identify the life you want & deserve and how to compassionately get there. -- Cognitive Behavior Therapy for Suicide Prevention (CBT-SP) Sometimes the world seems unmanageable and our thoughts are looking for solutions that appear to be unrealistic. Our inner thoughts and emotions can protect us ....... but they can also lie to us. The saying, 'No Feeling is Final' relates to emotional thinking we mistakenly use as fact to protect us from being emotionally vulnerable, compassionate and honest with ourselves. Words & thoughts can become automatic and powerful enough to change us to being problem focused vs solution focused. Understanding why-when-how is 1/2 the battle...... then it's onto figuring out what you really want-wish-need in your life...... then empowering you to rewrite each day's narrative with things that make you feel safe, connected & a part of things that you make you smile.