Comprehensive Therapy Services with Trauma-Informed Care

Transform your life with Gwen Pontikes, offering trauma informed care tailored to your needs. Whether struggling with anxiety, depression, or trauma, Gwen’s holistic approach combines understanding and effective techniques to foster healing and growth. With a background in trauma informed care, clients are empowered to overcome challenges and achieve a balanced and fulfilling life. Reach out today to start your journey towards wellbeing and resilience.

Anxiety Therapy

Therapy can assist clients with anxiety by creating a supportive environment where they can openly discuss their feelings, thoughts and behaviors. Humans are wired for safety and our thoughts have a negative bias for survival. Each person adapts to their childhood and adult home, school, community and work environment in different ways. Where these coping skills may have helped you get through past experiences, we will work holistically with mind and body to help you move toward helpful thoughts and behaviors so you can feel more comfortable and be the best version of yourself.

How does anxiety show up?

Physical symptoms of increased heart rate, sweating, trembling, shortness of breath, fatigue, insomnia, muscle tension, and stomach issues.

Emotional symptoms can be persistent worry, irritability, restlessness and fear of losing control.

Cognitive symptoms are difficulty concentrating, negative thinking patterns and self-doubt

Behavioral symptoms can be perfectionism, workaholism, over-exercise, overeating, procrastination, avoidance and compulsive behaviors. Many people use alcohol or drugs to "self-medicate" their anxiety symptoms.

What are goals of therapy for anxiety?

Physically - Decreased intensity and frequency of anxiety symptoms, greater ability to manage triggers for anxiety, fewer panic attacks

Emotionally - Improved mood, increased awareness of broad range of emotions and ability to feel emotions fluidly rather than getting "stuck" in them

Cognitively - Increased ability to observe thoughts, question negative thoughts for accurate reflection, reframe thoughts to more helpful thoughts, increased ability to focus

Behaviorally - Increased ability to engage in life, less procrastination and avoidance, increased ability to replace prior coping mechanisms with updated and healthy coping skills, improved relationships, increased productivity and better sleep.

Depression Therapy

Therapy can assist clients with depression by creating a supportive environment where they can openly discuss their feelings. I employ various therapeutic approaches, such as cognitive-behavioral therapy to help clients identify and change negative thought patterns. I provide coping strategies and tools to manage symptoms, fostering a sense of empowerment and hope. Over time, clients can develop greater self-awareness and learn healthier ways to cope with their depression, ultimately improving their overall well-being.

How does depression show up?

Physical Symptoms of Fatigue, insomnia, low energy, appetite and weight change, headaches and unexplained physical pain

Emotional Symptoms such as persistent sad, "empty" mood, irritability, anger, loss of pleasure in things you used to enjoy, feeling "flat", feelings of guilt or worthlessness, feeling hopeless

Cognitive symptoms such as black and white inflexible thinking, distorted thinking, thoughts of death or suicide (thoughts of death and suicide require immediate professional help - call or text 988 - Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or chat at 988lifeline.org.

Behavioral symptoms such as slow movements, slow speech, difficulty getting out of bed or taking a shower. Many people start or increase substance use to "self-medicate" and feel better causing new life issues and physical problems.

Spiritual symptoms of feeling disconnected

Goals for of Therapy for Depression?

Physically - Therapy for depression often relieves physical pain of heavy emotions. You will have more energy to put into your life.

Emotionally - We will focus on noticing, labeling, feeling emotions without judgment to increase fluidity of emotions.

Cognitively - We will look at what depression is telling you - do you need some changes in your life? What does depression say to you? Is this accurate? We will work to focus on helpful thoughts that are more flexible than the black and white thoughts of depression.

Behaviorally - we will make a plan to take small steps of action to get moving physically. This often pulls along mood in a positive direction. Movement is medicine. We will collaborate on a plan if you struggle with substance use based on your circumstances and goals.

Spiritually - we will work with your concept or growing ideas about spirituality and create action plans to put your values and meaning making into your daily practice.

Trauma Recovery

I am dedicated to supporting your healing journey through trauma-informed therapy. Utilizing the principles of polyvagal theory, I will help you understand how to regulate your body's responses to stress and trauma. Combined with EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing) techniques and Somatic Therapy, I will facilitate the processing of distressing memories, allowing you to reclaim your sense of and well-being with adaptive information processing. Together, we can create a compassionate space for you to heal and grow.

What can experiencing single event or multiple events/chronic or complex trauma look like?

Physical symptoms can look like numbness, disconnection to your body, fatigue, panic attacks, rapid heart beat, nervous system stuck in fight/flight, fawn or freeze mode. You may have nightmares, flashbacks or intrusive thoughts.Reminders of the event(s) may cause nausea, pain, or trembling.

Emotional symptoms can look like feeling disoriented, feeling like you are in hyper-vigilant mode, or feeling uncomfortable in crowds or outside of the home. You may have overwhelming emotions of fear, anger, guilt or shame.

Cognitive symptoms can be thoughts of unworthiness, guilt, shame, mental fogginess, difficulties concentrating. You may have negative thoughts about yourself or the world.

Behavioral symptoms can look like behaviors that are not helpful or hurt you repetitively, falling into or staying in toxic relationships repetitively, not taking care of yourself, shutting down. You may have avoidance of people, places or things that remind you of the event(s). You may detach yourself from relationships. Substance use often increases to block memories and pain.

What are Goals of Trauma Therapy?

Physically - We will work together to assess your nervous system states building awareness. You will learn to notice the signals that your nervous system is moving into fight/flight or freeze mode. You will learn skills to understand what state you are in so we can ensure we process trauma within your own window of safety. You will feel less tightness in your chest.

Emotionally - We will work to understand emotions that may have gotten "stuck" with trauma - acknowledging them and allowing them to be more fluid. If appropriate, we will utilize EMDR and Somatic Therapy to process emotions.

Cognitively - We will work together to build a treatment plan to target charged events/memories and their neural networks to rewire these memories and "file them" so they are not intrusive to your daily life. We will work through negative cognitions about yourself and the world with EMDR techniques where you can process your experience with adaptive information processing.

Behaviorally - You will build awareness of triggers and utilize skills we practice to feel safe in your environment without having to use prior coping skills such as substance use to numb out. You will work to build relationships with healthy boundaries and communication based on new adaptive neural networks. We will work together on your healing with the goal that you will feel like you are actively engaged with your life rather than watching it in a movie.

Recovery from Alcohol or Drugs

Early recovery life is not always easy as you practice taking action with a new "design for living". Substances may have provided a temporary solution to your struggles and after time this solution may have created more problems rather than being the solution any longer. If you are in early recovery, I can support you as you build healthy habits into your life and continue to work through mental health challenges along the way.

If you or a loved one are currently struggling with active alcohol or drug use impacting your life and relationships negatively, I can help you create a plan to reduce harm or learn the steps that will help you live without using substances for coping while learning/practicing new coping skills/tools to live a healthy life without regulating yourself with substances.

Whether you love someone who is struggling or you yourself are struggling - it can be an extremely lonely place. If you are concerned about a loved one, you may notice you have very similar problems as your loved one suffering with addiction such as anxiety, insomnia or a feeling of shutting down. You will benefit from learning what you can control and what you are powerless over as you learn and practice new healthy skills and boundaries that support yourself and your loved one without enabling addiction to thrive.

Please reach out if you "are sick and tired of being sick and tired" and would like to start working on the problems that led to substance use to cope and learn/practice new coping skills that are more nurturing and healthy for your body and self.