Elizabeth & Associates, LLC

01/10/2022

Often times when I meet with my clients, they think of trauma as something other people have experienced, but not them. Sadly, every human has experienced some kind of trauma whether it’s “big” or “little”. If you’re having traumatic responses, (don’t worry I’ll explain those in coming posts) you have trauma. I know this can sound scary, but I think it can actually be freeing to realize what is going is REAL and not just in your head! There are so many treatment options to give freedom from the past, but recognizing what’s going on is the first step to healing!

07/13/2021

Here’s a quick set of questions to help think through why we reacted the way we react!

06/29/2021

We so often learn ways of handling life as children and young adults to “survive the moment”, and then feel frustrated when the skills we learned start to become maladaptive, unhelpful or don’t work. This is where the amazing work that therapy can help: We can learn new ways to handle and grow from previous trauma. No judgment to the old way we used to handle things, and excitement for the new growth in our life going forward.

06/23/2021

Here in Gilbert, AZ we don’t often see a lot of rain. But today I’m soaking (pun totally intended) in my view of rain droplets as I sit with clients. There’s a lot of reasons I think the rain helps us especially with our emotions, but today I’m just letting it remind me to breathe.

06/15/2021

This says it all, taking care of yourself is the most helpful thing you can do to improve your own mental health!

05/25/2021

Some days I wish I could just wave a magic wand, and my clients trauma would disappear, the marriage would be healed, and the behavior would be gone. But what really helps, is to be patient, to know that change takes time, and when we are patient with ourselves it allows the The growth that we need, slow steady growth!

05/14/2021

Happy Friday! I hope y’all take time to breathe deep, sleep in a little and get some quality time with the people you love!

05/05/2021

What a profound quote from somebody who lived in a concentration camp for years, and had every single one of his family members killed. As much as I wish we could change the circumstances around us, the only thing we can truly change is how we respond. We have the responsibility for growth and healing, even if the pain we are enduring was caused by situations out of our control.

04/22/2021

We sure can be our own worst enemy sometimes, am I right? But when we show kindness to the parts of us that are insecure, hurting, immature and maybe even traumatized we start to heal our internal world!

04/01/2021

This training is going to be so amazing! Only $65 for a day training! Sign up now!!

We're excited to announce that our annual spring conference will feature Dr. Linda Metcalf! This webinar combines both the solution focused approach with the narrative therapy approach which presents the application of working with families, groups, individuals and children/teens. Together, the "cousins" of postmodernism blend together to keep things moving, with the addition of meaning and values of the client.

For more information and to register, click here: https://bit.ly/3qQ08Dn.

If you're interested in volunteering for this or future events, send us a message.

03/05/2021

I was talking with a therapist friend and we both were acknowledging the stress of this past year. This was brought on when she walked past my office and kindly said that I looked tired, I told her I had had nightmares the whole night before and my loving husband had to help pull me out of dream after dream.

The level of intensity in my office has increased, people are dealing with, not only a world wide pandemic, but the pandemic is triggering past trauma, revealing cracks in marriages, bringing challenges in parenting, and the list goes on.

I don’t say anything of this to get sympathy or applause, I love my job and am so thankful for the privilege to sit with people in their moments of pain. I say it to encourage you if you have a friend, family member or someone you know in your community who is working in mental health to reach out to them with a “how are you doing, I’m praying for you, or what you do matters”.

When a world in pandemic shut down, the mental health professionals did not. They kept working, many more than ever, counseling patients on how to survive something they'd never seen before, something they feared themselves. They counseled while the virus ravaged their neighborhoods, with their chil...