What are your areas of specialty?

My counseling practice focuses on women’s issues, particularly those encountered by women professionals. My 25+ years of experience as a business executive greatly influences my approach to therapy. I draw upon my knowledge of relevant issues and concerns that are common among women professionals – stress/anxiety, depression, marital strain,and disordered eating.

STRESS/ANXIETY

Stress is a person’s reaction to a situation that is perceived as a threat at some level. It is the internal pressure we put on ourselves in reaction to an external situation. It starts with an activating event, followed by a belief about the event, and finally, consequences of the event. In the business world, a moderate amount of stress can keep you feeling sharp and on your game, but extreme, long-term stress overloads your body’s capacity to effectively respond to stressful situations. The goal, then, is to learn how to recognize your own capacity for stress, recognizing triggering events, irrational beliefs about the event perhaps resulting from past experience and hurts, and regaining a sense of control over your choice of responses to the triggering event. Avoiding “burn out” is more than just learning about coping mechanisms. It is an ongoing exercise in recognizing triggers and using your unique strengths to respond in a positive, effective way.

Burnout is a state of emotional and physical exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress. It can occur when you feel overwhelmed and unable to meet constant demands. As the stress continues, you begin to lose the interest or motivation that led you to take on a certain role in the first place. Burnout reduces your productivity and saps your energy. Because burnout doesn’t happen overnight – and it’s difficult to fight once you’re in the middle of it – it’s important to recognize the early signs of burnout and head it off. Burnout usually has its roots in stress, so the earlier you recognize the symptoms of stress and address them the better chance you have of avoiding burnout.

The symptoms of burnout (excerpted from For Women’s Sake Seminar “7 Signs of Burnout”) tend to be more mental than physical. They can include feelings of:

Powerlessness
Hopelessness
Emotional Exhaustion
Detachment

Isolation
Irritability
Frustration
Being trapped

Failure
Despair
Cynicism
Apathy

The difference between stress and burnout is that stress involves “too much”: too many pressures that demand too much of you physically and psychologically. But stressed individuals believe that if they can just get everything under control, they’ll feel better. Burnout is about “not enough”: feeling empty, devoid of motivation, and beyond caring. Being burned out means feeling empty, devoid of motivation, and beyond caring. People experiencing burnout often don’t see any hope of positive change in their situations. If excessive stress is like drowning in responsibilities, burnout is being all dried up. Also, the symptoms of burnout can take months to surface, so if someone points out to you some changes in your attitude or behavior that are typical of burnout, listen to what they have to say.

Stress versus Burnout

Stress

Characterized by over engagement
Emotions are over reactive
Produces urgency and hyperactivity
Loss of energy
Leads to anxiety disorders
Primary damage is physical
May kill you prematurely

Burnout

Emotions are blunted
Produces helplessness and hopelessness
Loss of motivation, ideals and hope
Leads to detachment and depression
Primary damage is emotional
May make life not seem worth living

A “bad day at work” is not the same as burnout, which is when:

Every day on the job is a bad one
Caring about work seems like a waste of energy
The majority of your day is spent on tasks that are either mind-numbingly dull or unpleasant
Nothing you do seems to make a difference in a work environment that is hostile or unengaging

Common Causes of Job Burnout:

Setting unrealistic goals for yourself or having them imposed on you
Being expected to be too many things to too many people
Having lots of responsibility but not enough authority
An unmanageable schedule
Working under rules that seem unreasonably coercive or punitive
Doing work that frequently causes you to violate your personal values
Boredom from doing work that never changes or doesn’t challenge you
Feeling trapped for economic reasons by a job that fits any of the scenarios above

Burnout is a gradual process. Here are the Four Stages of Burnout:

Physical, mental and emotional exhaustion

Symptoms:
• A shift from pride in a high quality performance to looking for
shortcuts
• Brain strain”, energy shortage
Shame and doubt

Symptoms:
•When asked to take on a new assignment or task, you silently
scream “oh, no!”, but don’t negotiate an alternate plan because of
fear of what others might think.
•Begin to believe that others are beginning to see “chinks in the
armor”
Cynicism and callousness

Symptoms:
•Shift in attitude to “CYA“; efforts focused more on defensive, cover-
ups than execution
•Smoldering frustration and anger turns to suspicion and mistrust
of co-workers and boss
Failure, helplessness and crisis

Symptoms:
•Feeling stuck – “doesn’t matter what I do”
•Become more disoriented; impaired cognitive ability
•Increased emotionality, especially sadness or anger

Personality Factors Increasing Risk of Burnout

Strong sense of responsibility
Rigid perfectionism
Image conscious
Difficulty admitting mistakes and/or imperfections

Burnout can lead to depression or a mental health condition called general anxiety disorder (GAD). For more information about GAD, see the National Institute of Health (NIH) article “When worry gets out of control” on the NIH website.

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DEPRESSION

As stated above in the STRESS/ANXIETY discussion, long-term excessive stress can lead to clinical depression. But there are many other causes of depression, which vary from one person to another. Other causes of depression are genetic predisposition, chemical imbalances and personal life experiences. Trauma, including abuse, can also lead to depression, sometimes with delayed onset.
Symptoms of depression may appear gradually, but often include one or more of the following:

Persistent sad, anxious or “empty” feelings
Feelings of hopelessness and/or pessimism
Irritability, restlessness, anxiety
Feelings of guilt, worthlessness and/or helplessness
Loss of interest in activities or hobbies once pleasurable, including sex
Fatigue and decreased energy
Difficulty concentrating, remembering details and making decisions
Insomnia, waking up during the night, or excessive sleeping
Overeating, or appetite loss
Thoughts of suicide, suicide attempts
Persistent aches or pains, headaches, cramps or digestive problems that do not ease even with treatment

If you are uncertain whether you have any symptoms of depression and, if so, whether they are severe enough to seek treatment, the Mayo Clinic provides a quick and simple online version of the standard self-assessment with immediate results and recommendations presented.

For more information on what causes depression and how women experience depression, see the National Institute of Health (NIH) website.

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MARITAL STRAIN

Persistent stress can also impact interpersonal relationships, especially in long-term relationships such as marriage. Partners are often unable to understand and adapt to changing patterns of behavior resulting from stress and may in turn introduce corresponding behaviors of their own that negatively impact the relationship. Research from the Gottman Institute has shown that when the ratio between positive and negative interactions in a couple are significantly imbalanced, emotional distancing can occur, and ultimately cause the relationship to collapse. Proactively addressing marital strain and reinforcing patterns of positive interaction, as well as providing techniques for managing conflict and building rituals of connection can help reverse emotional distancing and preserve the relationship. Although the Gottman Method of Marital Therapy is designed for work with couples, the couple as a whole may benefit if one partner begins to use the techniques to shift their own patterns of behavior.

Having completed Level I and Level II of training, I am able to administer and interpret Gottman Method of Marital Therapy assessments for use in couples work or to introduce specific techniques to help individuals shift their own patterns of behavior in a relationship.

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DISORDERED EATING/EATING DISORDERS

Disordered eating is when an individual does not respond to their internal hunger and fullness cues from their body and instead uses external criteria to make decisions over what and when to eat. What results is an unhealthy relationship with food and the experience of eating as a means of nourishing the body. Disordered eating is often accompanied with a negative view of one’s body and a preoccupation with one’s appearance and/or weight. Although it can be said that everyone can have episodes of not responding to internal hunger and fullness cues, disordered eating is at a level when such behavior can become repetitive and potentially self-harming. At its extreme, the behavior can lead to a group of medical diagnoses termed “eating disorders”, which include anorexia and bulimia.

Whether disordered eating or an eating disorder, exploring underlying emotions and interpersonal factors are often effective in helping to substitute unhealthy behaviors and negative self-image with positive self-esteem and a healthy relationship with food. Learning to recognize social triggers that help break patterns and create a new experience of eating as a means of nourishing the body and as a form of social connection.

I am a member of the Austin Eating Disorder Specialists and, in addition to my private practice, am a program therapist at Cedar Springs Eating Disorder Clinic. I am committed to helping women increase self-awareness and confidence in the areas of their life experiences or relationships that may trigger unhealthy eating patterns. I also work with individuals whose patterns are not at the level “eating disorders”, but feel that they have “disordered eating” tendencies that cause them concern. I am able to offer evidence-based techniques and other resources to assist clients in their goal of developing or re-connecting with a healthy relationship with food.

For more information on eating disorders, see the National Institute of Health (NIH) website.

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