I can help you:
navigate overwhelming emotion so you can feel safe and grounded.
resolve conflict in relationships so you can feel connected and secure
connect to yourself so you can feel powerful and purposeful.
Therapy for BPD
For people with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)
You’re struggling to feel connected to relationships and maintain healthy relationships. You really wants relationship, friendships, romantic relationships, partnerships, but whenever you find one, things seem to go really well until they just fall apart. You might feel afraid of losing relationships, feel like you doesn’t deserve relationships, and ultimately end up in a lot of fights and lose relationships.
You aren’t sure how to live life in long term life values, you’re stuck living day to day getting through big emotional waves, and find it hard to know who you truly are and if you even like who you truly are. You’re tired of feeling disconnected and disengaged from life, you want to feel secure in yourself and go after what you want. You want a life that feels good and important.
You’ve been struggling with overwhelming emotion, anger, frustration, sadness, fear, at times hopeless that you will ever feel grounded. Emotions hit you like unrelenting ocean waves, and you’re being tossed and thrown around trying to get above water for some air. Sometimes in all the efforts to stop overwhelming emotion, you might do things to yourself and your relationships that help in the moment, but might have lasting unwanted consequences in the long term.
With comprehensive DBT therapy, I’ll help you manage overwhelming emotion so you can feel safe and grounded. I’ll help you practice relationship skills so you can connect closely and feel secure in them. I’ll help you dismantle painful self talk so you can grow to accept and love yourself and the life you build.
My Approach
Comprehensive DBT informed therapy
DBT skills training
Individual DBT therapy
Trauma Focused therapy with EMDR and Prolonged Exposure
Hi!!! I’m Kelsey
She/hers
I’m a clinical psychologist and I specialize in working with people with BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder). Through comprehensive DBT, I’ll help you surf big emotional waves with safety and mastery, build healthy relationships, and connect to self compassion.
DBT is a science backed therapy that focuses on building practical skills and strategies to regulate emotion, calm distress, build healthy relationships, and feel more grounded in yourself. DBT uses skills, radical acceptance, and dialectics to help people create safety and build a life worth living.
I incorporate a trauma-informed approach that helps identify trauma symptoms, offer skills for soothing trauma symptoms, and processes to repair trauma memories.
When I use DBT I start with setting clear goals together to target our therapy to what you are wanting to see change. We set a plan for skills to build and practice in real life, non-judgmentally understanding what’s interfering with these goals, and trouble shoot problem points. Over time, you’ll build a comprehensive set of skills to create change in your relationships, emotions, sense of self, and life goals. These skills become a part of your daily life, tailored specifically to your priorities and values.
HOW IT WORKS
1) How do I get started?
Click “Book Now” and schedule an initial appointment. I will call to discuss your interests and goals for therapy, and my approach to see if we’re a good fit before getting started. This call is brief, about 20 minutes and helps us get the lay of the land.
2) What happens next?
If we’re a good fit to work together, I’ll confirm the initial appointment and we’ll get started. In this session we’ll discuss some background and set up therapy goals together. We’ll discuss the next steps and you’ll leave session with a clear plan for our work together.
3) Then therapy?
We’ll meet weekly for 50-minute sessions and work through the steps of your treatment plan. In DBT, the first four session are dedicated to Pre-treatment, where we discuss your goals and how DBT will approach these goals and explore more about what DBT is all about. If at any time your goals change or something isn’t quite working, we can adjust so that therapy is effective for you and meets your needs.
“You are not a burden.
You will NEVER BE a burden.”
Sophie Turner
FAQs
See my General FAQs for questions about fees, insurance and who I work with.
How often will we meet?
I meet with my clients on a consistent schedule that is set up to best meet their therapy goals, financial needs, and time constraints. Ideally, when we’re actively targeting life threatening or self harming behaviors, we meet at least once weekly to maintain consistent support. Some clients meet twice or three times per week if they need, and other clients meet every other week. All consistent attendance is helpful and there aren’t any problems maintaining progress your own way. Once my client has reached their therapy goals for emotion regulation, we’ll discuss ongoing maintenance and closing sessions occurring once per month. After that, my clients can schedule single sessions as needed, and close and restart therapy any time they need.
How does DBT help with BPD?
DBT is quite helpful for many people wanting to learn how to manage painful and uncomfortable emotions, communicate better with others, set boundaries, and work to align more closely with their personal values. DBT is a coping skills-focused therapy, that teaches clients specific and easy-to-use coping skills to help regulate emotions and stabilize impulsive behavior. My clients use DBT to build effective skills to use to support trauma recovery, cope with difficult emotions, enhance healthy relationships, and connect with their values.
You can get more information about DBT on my blog and podcast.
Do you have a DBT therapy group?
Yes, I facilitate a DBT skills group specifically for LGBTQIA+ people. These groups help people learn and practice the core DBT skills, and put them into practice in their lives right away. Get more information about this group here.
Do I have BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder)?
Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is “a pervasive pattern of instability of interpersonal relationships, self image, and affects, and marked impulsivity beginning in early adulthood one present in a variety of contexts”.
Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is a cluster of symptoms that include at least five of the nine following traits:
Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment
a pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation
Persistently unstable self image or sense of self
Impulsivity that is potentially self damaging in at least two areas, for example finances, sexual relationships, substance abuse, reckless driving/risk taking behavior, etc
recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, threats, ideation, or non-suicidal self harm behavior
emotional instability with intense reactivity, sensitivity, and prolonged return to baseline
Chronic feelings of emptiness
Intense anger or difficulty regulating anger
stress related paranoid ideation or dissociation symptoms
Key to BPD is that symptoms are “pervasive” and chronic, which means the symptoms occur in most or all settings and relationships like family, friends, work relationships, romantic relationships, at home alone and with others. That makes BPD difficult to experience without support and therapy, as it affects all parts of a person’s life.
As there are many different combinations of traits and symptoms a person may have, everyone’s BPD experience may be very different from one another, and therefore treatment must be customized to each person’s specific needs.
I share more helpful information about BPD on my blog and my podcast.
