“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
— Anais Nin

It’s Not That Your Dreams Aren’t Achievable…

It’s More About Your Mindset Is Getting In The Way Of Achieving Them.

You’re a woman over 40 who has goals and dreams. You’re talented, capable, and full of ideas that you quietly keep in your notes app. Each day, you put on your game face and do what needs to be done. You are the organizer, juggler, manager, and taskmaster in your life. Yet underneath, it’s never enough. You seek the accolades of reaching perfection that never seem to happen .

You doubt your ability in what you can achieve, and it keeps you from taking action.

Maybe you’re a business owner and killing it! You have clients. You’re earning decent money. But, when you think about leveling up your business, you feel yourself shrink.

Or perhaps you’ve spent two decades building a career which you LOVE but you feel undervalued and like you’re at a cross roads, not sure what your next move should be.

To add insult to injury, you learn that others in your industry are earning much more than you. Not to mention that you over-deliver way too much.

But inside the self-judgment and negative beliefs about who you are block you from the life you want to live.

It’s not that you’re in crisis, it’s more about the imposter syndrome that you can’t shake on your own…and you’re ready to untangle yourself from its deeply rooted grasp.

Here’s The Thing

When you behave in ways that dampen your path to your goals, dreams and desires, such as:

  • Taking more responsibility at work without more compensation

  • Endlessly second guessing your decisions or being stuck in analysis paralysis

  • Not delegating responsibilities (this would be at work or home) because you innately believe that’s what you’re supposed to be doing

It’s because you are being directed by your negative faulty beliefs that stem from your past experiences.

Examples of these negative faulty narratives include:

  • “I cannot succeed”

  • “It’s not ok to show my emotions”

  • “I am inadequate”

  • “I’m not good enough”

These (or similar) messages were created and imprinted onto your psyche by your past experiences and, over time, have become your autopilot.

This is when I usually hear, “But Carol, this sounds like people who’ve experienced some kind of trauma…that’s not me.”

I hear what you’re saying, and want you to know that it does not have to take what you may believe to be trauma for these negative messages to be formed.

Any experience that overwhelmed your mind’s ability to fully process and store it into your memory can be responsible for contributing to your self-defeating messages.

Let me explain…

Your Mind Is Wired To Be Resilient

Your mind naturally seeks to help you cope and heal from the troubling events you experience. When this process is in balance, these troubling experiences shift into the background and eventually feel like memories. You can remember that they occurred, but with a sense of distance and resolution.

But, It Can Sometimes Become Overloaded

However, the impact of a disturbing event can “glitch” your mind’s natural healing system causing it to become blocked or imbalanced. This is the essence of trauma.

Trauma can be considered to be any event (or events) that occurred and has become “stuck” in your mind and body, leading to ongoing suffering or negatively impacting your functioning or growth in the present.

Trauma may be a single event or exposure to multiple experiences from either the same source or unrelated events or sources. There are many aspects of an individual and one’s experiences to consider when looking at the extent of trauma’s effects.

Perhaps you don’t believe you’ve experienced trauma. Yes, of course, this may be so. Not every adverse event you experience is traumatic. Remember, our minds are resilient!

I find that my clients don’t connect an overwhelming past experience with their present day mindset challenges…at first. Through our work, they usually have an “ah-ha” moment when they connect a negative core experience(s) with their identified negative self-judgment. It is here they realize the impact their past has on their current day to day life. Once reprocessed, they report feeling a sense of release and peace.

Here’s an example of what I mean by connecting a past experience to a present day challenge:

Let’s say when you were 7 years old, an adult yelled at you while you were playing with your friends. You have always been a child that follows the rules, so being yelled at was unusual and exceptionally distressing. At the time, you felt afraid, unsafe, embarrassed, and humiliated by this adult’s action.

Fast forward to today, you don’t ever really think about that experience from age 7, but when you do, it still reverberates. You may describe it as like “it just happened yesterday.”

And with no further thought about this past incident, you start to panic at the idea of putting yourself out there, whether it’s professionally or socially. Just thinking about taking this leap, you start to feel your chest tighten… like it did that day when you were 7 years old.

You may not consciously realize the connection between these two circumstances, but your brain and body do.

This is because when you were a child, your developing brain wasn’t yet equipped to view life or cope with disturbing experiences in the same way as an adult brain.

When you were yelled at by your teacher, the intense emotions, and distress you felt in that moment overloaded (aka glitched) your mind’s ability to properly process the experience, rendering it stuck in your brain and body.

When these kind of experiences become “stuck,” they continue to inform your thoughts, behavior, and sense of self.

EMDR and Brainspotting therapies can help to reengage your natural healing system to “unstick” these experiences and unblock their self-defeating feelings and negative messages, so they can be healthfully processed.

  • Even thinking of being seen on social media or networking creates tightness in your chest, throat, shoulders, stomach, or other areas of your body that hold stress

  • You look at others achievements and tell yourself that you’ll never be in the same league as them

  • You find yourself caught up in the tasks that drain you, instead of nurturing you, and you almost never ask for help

  • You second guess even the simplest decisions and often get caught in analysis paralysis

  • You struggle with your self-worth in your work or business, particularly as you ascend the “ladder of success”

  • You recognize there is a relationship between your present day struggles and your past “stuff,” and want to resolve your “stuff” so you can live the life you want

  • No matter how much you want to progress, you find yourself gravitating back to doing “what’s safe” instead of taking a step outside the box

Where You’re At Now

  • Feeling comfortable with “putting yourself out there” where recognizing your self-worth overrides scrutinizing thoughts and self-judgment

  • You see life’s glitches as opportunities to learn, not as demoralizing, and can tap into your strengths and areas to improve upon without disparaging yourself

  • Being able to say no to things that you would normally have said yes to, and setting boundaries and limits with others whose expectations overstep what you’re able to provide

  • Delegating tasks and asking for help so you can preserve your bandwidth

  • Take decisive action and be able to sit with the results, for better or worse, not disparage yourself, and view any outcome as an opportunity to learn

  • See yourself holistically, with congruency between your internal feelings about yourself and the achievements you’ve attained

  • Create healthy space from your past and settle unresolved past experiences in order to clear the path to progress

Where You Can Be

How I help

  • Intensive EMDR & Brainspotting Therapy

    Combining both EMDR and Brainspotting

    My online Therapy Intensives help women over 40 who have deeply held blocks to reach their career goals. This is for you if you’re ready to get to the root of, and heal, the blocks that are feeding a narrative of not being good enough.

    Find Out More

  • EMDR Therapy

    For Women Over 40

    EMDR therapy assists to build and enhance your personal resources to increase self-esteem, heal the impact of “stuck” experiences, and improve your ability to manage future stressful experiences.

    Find Out More

  • Brainspotting Therapy

    Tapping into the brain's natural ability to process and heal experiences

    Brainspotting works on the connections between your eyes and brain, allowing you to access and process deep emotional experiences and trauma through specific eye positions.

    Find Out More

  • Take my Quiz

    Find out why you’re sabotaging your success

    My Quiz quickly and effectively gets to the root cause of what’s shielding you from achieving you dream life. It takes just a couple of minutes and will leave you with some of those answers you’re looking for.

    Take the Quiz
Contact Me For A Free Consultation

You’re Ready If…

  • You see value doing the internal work on yourself because you see how it can benefit the quality of your life

  • You see the potential to progress your life’s journey by restructuring your deeply rooted self-defeating thoughts

  • You want to gain a deeper understanding of who you are and how past experiences have affected your thoughts, behaviors and actions

  • You’ve become aware of a certain thought or behavior pattern(s) that have been working against you and you want to stop them from interfering with your growth

  • You’re hitting mental walls or emotional blocks to taking the next steps you need to live your dream life, and you want to dismantle them

You’re Not Ready If…

  • You don’t believe there to be a connection between how you show up in your present day life and past experiences

  • You don’t see the value in doing deeper work in psychotherapy for the purpose of getting to the root of negative self-beliefs and the experiences that have contributed to their formation

  • You’re not interested in or feel ready to process, on a deeper level, the experiences that hold you back, the beliefs created by them, and the parts of you that keep this system in place

  • You don’t “believe in” psychotherapy

  • EMDR therapy doesn’t feel like a good fit for you.

  • Brainspotting therapy doesn’t feel like a good fit for you.

I’m Ready, What Do I Do Next?

First, request your consultation

Go to my Contact page. You will see a link to my calendar that displays my availability. You can then click on an available time to request your free 30-minute phone consultation. Once you’ve submitted your request, look for my confirmation email.

Next, complete the Questionnaire

Your confirmation email will request that you complete the Consultation Questionnaire through my client portal. The questionnaire must be completed no later than 2 hours prior to our appointment time, or you will be contacted via the client portal to reschedule.

Then, let’s have a chat

I will call you at our scheduled time where I will learn more about you and respond to your questions. We’ll decide if we are a good fit to work together. If either of us believes we will not be a good fit, I will help you find a referral to another provider.

 FAQs

  • My introductory phone call is free and lasts 30 minutes.

    My fee is $360 for a 60-75 minute initial intake session.

    Session fees are $300 for each 50-minute follow-up session.

  • If we agree to continue to meet after our initial 60-75 minute session, we will meet for sessions on a weekly basis for 50 minutes.

    Meeting more than once a week for psychotherapy sessions may occur on occasion, such as when an absence from session is made up (as per my Consistency Policy) or if it is clinically indicated.

    Decreasing the frequency of sessions may occur, but only after initial goals are met and we agree decreasing sessions is an appropriate next step in treatment. If sessions are decreased in frequency, they may be increased again if needed.

  • Yes, I do!

    For more information about therapy intensives, click here.

  • My 15 hour intensive program for new clients and returning clients who have not done intensive work with me is $6,525.

    3 hour intensive sessions are available for previous intensive clients and current non-intensive psychotherapy clients at $435 per hour.

    Find out more about intensive therapy here.

  • I accept insurance as an out-of-network provider for all insurance providers.

    If you have out-of-network benefits with your insurance plan, at your request, I will provide you a monthly superbill for you to submit to potentially receive partial reimbursement.

    Please note all insurance carriers require a diagnosis on any superbill you submit.

  • Please be aware that having out-of-network benefits does not guarantee that claims will be approved or that your provider will reimburse you the amount of my fee. The reimbursement you may possibly receive is often less than my fee.

    If you have any questions about your specific out-of-network insurance benefit, please contact your insurance plan directly. Some questions to ask are:

    Does my plan have out-of-network benefits? If so, how do I submit superbills?

    Do I have an out-of-network deductible? How much is it?

    What is the allowed amount for CPT codes 90791 (for the initial session) and 90834 (for 50 minute non-intensive follow-up sessions) and 90837 (if you’re doing an intensive therapy) session?

    Please be aware, the allowed amount is the amount the insurance will allow for the service you submitting for. It is this amount that is applied to your deductible (typically less than my full fee) and used to calculate your coinsurance.

    Once my deductible is met, what is my coinsurance? (This is a percentage that is deducted from the amount allowed for reimbursement (your responsibility) once you’ve fulfilled your deductible.

    For example, if you have a $1,000 deductible, and your carrier’s allowed amount is $100, then $100 is applied toward your deductible for each session we’ve met until it reaches the $1,000.

    Then, if your insurance has a 30% coinsurance (the coinsurance applies once your deductible is met), will reimburse you $70 for each session.

  • You can set up a free 30-minute consultation on my contact page. You’ll be brought to a calendar with my availability where you can request an appointment.

    I will confirm your request and send a brief consultation questionnaire that is required to be completed before we speak. Our consultation will be rescheduled if the form is not completed by 2 hours prior to our scheduled consultation time.

    Please clarify any insurance related questions with your insurance carrier prior to our consultation.

  • I have a no-cancellation policy/consistency policy. If you need to be absent from a session, you can make up a session seven days before or after your original appointment.

    Non-intensive sessions allow up to the session’s start time to provide notice of your absence. If you fail to notify me of your absence prior to the session start time, you will be charged the full fee for the session and lose the ability to make up the session.

    An outright cancellation of your non-intensive appointment at any point will also result in your being charged full fee for the missed session.

    Intensive sessions - Please be aware that each intensive session requires a 50% non-refundable deposit and a minimum of 48 hours notice of your absence in order to be made up.

    Forfeit of your deposit and ability to make up the session will occur without the proper notification.

    An outright cancellation of an intensive appointment at any point will also result in a forfeit of your deposit.

    Not showing up for your intensive appointment, or canceling after your session time has begun will result in your being charged the full fee for the session.

    I will make every effort to find a time for you to make up a session.

  • My online psychotherapy practice is based out of New York. I am licensed in New York, New Jersey, and am a Registered Out of State Telehealth Provider in Florida.

    I can work with clients throughout all three of these states.