Elm Emotional Health and Wellness, LLC

05/28/2025

Mel Robbins has some hits and some misses, and her headlines drive me crazy--"breakthroughs" and "secret to"--because none of these are secrets or breakthroughs, they are ways of approaching life. But this podcast about anxiety hit it out of the park, and is 100% the way I approach anxiety in therapy. If you or someone you love has anxiety, give this a listen!

03/03/2025

I have graduated some clients this winter (yay for sustained improvements!) and have a few rare openings for new (adult) clients, who would be a good fit for my expertise and skill set. I am in network with Aetna, Geisinger, Highmark, and UPMC. Pass along this info to those who may be in need.

01/14/2025

Introducing Barley, our new office dog! Barley is an 8 week old Bernadoodle. Thus far, she has an exceedingly calm temperament, even for a puppy, and has interacted so well with clients this week. She will grow to be about 60 pounds. We look forward to sharing her with clientele for years to come!🐾🐕❤️

05/29/2024

A fantastic podcast on the value of anxiety, and why we may try too hard to rid our lives of it.

Do you spend time worrying about what could go wrong in the future, or stressing about something you did or said in the past? That nagging feeling has a name: anxiety. But what if worrying about preventing anxiety is actually getting in the way of our happiness? New York University neuroscientist We...

05/03/2024

Several clients have asked recently about starting shadow work. Shadow work is gaining some momentum in pop psychology, and will soon be having a moment, much like mindfulness did a few years ago. That doesn't mean it isn't worth checking out! I had a cancellation this week and was able to sit quietly in my office and delve into some of it. If you're interested in dipping your toe in the water, whether on your own or in therapy, a good place to start is to determine what your inner child wound is. We all have one! Yours might surprise you.

03/22/2024

Like most workplaces, not all weeks in therapy are created equal. I don't know what's in the air this week, but my clients came to WORK hard this week, and work they did. There were tears, pain, fears, insights, light bulb moments, and growth, and it was beautiful to be a part of. These things are not easy, and they are scary. I am constantly reminded of the resilience and strength of humans, and so honored to be a part of these journeys.

If you have a therapist who is giving you direct advice, or answering "what should I do?" questions for you, be wary of this. If it feels like your therapist is doing the work for you, be wary of this. This is not how the therapy journey is meant to unfold. As humans, we do our best when we put in the work to arrive at our own insights, questions, and life decisions. Scary? Yes. Empowering? Even more so. Learning to arrive at and trust your decisions? Life changing.

Thank you to all my fantastic clients who allow me to be a part of their journey!

02/04/2024

If you commonly experience the Sunday Scaries, here is some sage advice from my 8 year old daughter that she spoke about today while in the woods: "I had a headache because I had too many thoughts in my head. I was thinking about whether Daddy would be getting home from work late, and what I needed to improve at for basketball. So I just started standing by this tree and listening to the sound of the creek, and feeling the air. Then my thoughts were a lot quieter."

01/16/2024

Week 6 of 6! Relationships: with myself, with my partner, with my parents, with my friends (what friends?😆). We will discuss why we often don't feel warm and fuzzy towards our partner, how we fall into a trap of keeping score, and if/how we can accept that things just won't be equal in relationships.

01/13/2024

MomTherapy Week 5 of 6! Overwhelm/Overstimulation/Over It: the Roomba is too loud, why can I hear my husband’s jaw making noises when he chews, can my child’s voice possibly sound any more screechy??

Overstimulation isn't just for kids! We will explore this (challenging) phenomenon, as well as how we can work to mitigate it.

01/11/2024

Week 4 of 6: Mom guilt, cognitive dissonance, and why enough is never enough.

We will discuss self-expectations, why we are wired to compare (and why comparisons always fail us), as well as how to shift these constantly nagging feelings!

01/09/2024

MomTherapy week 3 of 6! Locking the bathroom door, and other discussions about "boundaries." We will discuss why neither your child(ren), nor anyone else, needs 24/7 access to you. Truly, they don't!

01/06/2024

Week 2 of 6!

Fight, flight, freeze, fawn, (and all the other f’s!):
How to encourage our physical selves and emotional selves to play nicely together, and what happens when they don’t.

We will discuss how our autonomic nervous system functions, and the ramifications of running in fight or flight mode for prolonged periods of time, like most of us do (work, errands, dinner, activities, meltdown, exhaustion, repeat!). We will learn how to engage our parasympathetic nervous system to start turning these damaging patterns around.