Therapy for Therapists, Nurses, and Physicians in Denver, CO
Serving Therapists, Nurses, and Physicians in NYC, Denver, and Maine via Secure Telehealth
It’s 9PM and you’ve just finished with your last client of the day. You feel the shutdown creeping into your eyelids and you slowly start disconnecting from yourself and your computer even though you know there’s a pile of notes waiting to be entered.
Lately, it feels like you’re dragging through life. It feels like you’re moving through soup to complete your goals, but there’s no finish line. There are always notes left undone or kids wanting you to play with them. Never mind the number of house projects to complete.
You don’t feel like you have the right to complain since on paper, you’re “living the dream.” But inside, you feel unsettled and over-burdened by the life you chose.
Forget “You can’t pour from an empty cup.” Let’s fill your cup back up simply because you deserve to have more capacity to enjoy your life. True relief isn’t another vacation or a lighter week. True relief comes from changing how your nervous system holds the weight of your clinical work. Together, we will process the vicarious trauma, dissolve the imposter syndrome, and get you back to a place where your career feels like a calling again, not a life sentence
What Does Therapy For Therapists and Healthcare Professionals Look Like?
When you’re a healthcare worker or therapist, you know the tools because you do this work. You’ve truly tried every tool in the box. If you’re looking for therapy, it’s because you’ve already hit a crisis point and you need help now. And now that you’re at this point, a sense of shame at not being able to “handle” the job you do.
We will start integrating somatic and distress tolerance tools from the beginning so you leave your first session feeling like you’ve accomplished something. This part of our work prepares you to safely go into those wounds and the earlier events that shaped who you are.
I’ve written for EMDRIA’s Focal Point Blog on using EMDR therapy to reduce shame in the healthcare professionals and therapists I see for therapy. I also use EMDR to target the workplace trauma that is “just part of the job.”
Most importantly, through therapy, you’ll start feeling like yourself again. You’ll look forward to spending time with your kids instead of dreading taking care of more people at the end of your day. You’ll find yourself effectively separating work from home and setting necessary boundaries to sustain yourself as a hard worker and a human being.
Therapy For Compassion Fatigue and Vicarious Trauma in Denver, CO
Workplace trauma impacts us the same as any other acute event. EMDR is incredibly effective for resolving the workplace traumas that contribute to burnout and compassion fatigue in healthcare professionals. I use specific EMDR protocols to address recent events to prevent you from developing PTSD by processing them now. My practice integrates parts work, somatic psychology, interpersonal therapy, CBT, DBT, and EMDR.
When Mainstream “Self Care” Doesn’t Cut It: Integrated EMDR, IFS, and Somatic Therapy for Healthcare Professionals in Colorado, NYC, & Maine
We are humans in caring professions and we’re bound to be impacted by the people and systems we work with. I offer therapy for therapists, healthcare workers, and helping professionals as someone who has been in similar shoes and who cares deeply about your longevity in the profession.
You’re a therapist, so you know the importance of a good self care routine. But sometimes our self care routines stop being as effective. If they become too routine, we become bored. Other times, we lose the motivation to engage in an activity we once looked forward to doing.
Signs of vicarious trauma and compassion fatigue that we address in therapy for Denver therapists and healthcare professionals and in NYC and Maine
- Feeling less connected to family and friends
- Numbing yourself by eating more, scrolling your phone, over sleeping, or using substances
- Dreading work (do you get the “Sunday Scaries?”)
- Irritability with coworkers, clients, or friends/family
- Escaping work by looking for other jobs non-stop or calling out more frequently
- Loss of sense of self outside of work
You know the physiological signs of compassion fatigue: How are you noticing them in your own body?
Therapists and healthcare professionals are notoriously bad at caring for our own mental health and we are prone to burnout and compassion fatigue. We are often perfectionists, high achieving, and a little self-sacrificing. On top of (sometimes because of) these personality traits, we have careers caring for others. We hold people during their hardest experiences during our own experiences of distress, grief, and the burdens of daily life. I specialize in supporting healthcare professionals getting through to the other side of this experience.
You’ve been told to “do your own work” to be a better therapist, but you’re not sure what that means.
My approach is gently challenging: I’ll help you pay attention to your patterns, including the intellectualizing that keeps you separated from experiencing what you’ve been through. You’re aware of the skills, but therapists and healthcare professionals aren’t always great at practicing what we preach. I will guide you to reconnect with your system and integrate all your knowledge to benefit your own wellbeing for once.
Skye Ross offers therapy for therapists and healthcare professionals in Colorado | Maine | NYC
Special Therapy Offers for Therapists and Healthcare Professionals in Denver, NYC, and Maine
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) About Therapy For Therapists and Healthcare Professionals
Everything you need to know before getting started.
How do I get started?
You can contact me using this form to request a free, 15-minute phone consultation. This is an opportunity to tell me a bit about your unique experience and for me to make sure that my approach is the right fit for you.
What is vicarious trauma and how is it different from workplace trauma or moral injury?
Vicarious trauma and workplace trauma both impact therapists and other healthcare professionals.
Vicarious trauma is also called “secondary trauma.” It’s traumatic stress that you experience from frequently hearing about or seeing other people’s traumatic experiences. Eventually, your nervous system starts to respond from a traumatized place. You stop feeling safe at work and outside of work. You become fatigued. You may start to resent the people you treat (compassion fatigue).
Workplace trauma is trauma experienced on the job. Women experience workplace traumas when their work is devalued or stolen by others. Workers in community health settings experience workplace trauma when they are threatened by people in services or experience chronic threats of funding and budget cuts.
Moral injury happens when the stressor or traumatic event strongly misaligns with your values. This often, but not always, relates to workplace traumas. It can also connect to a betrayal trauma, leadership trauma, or from working within a system or organization that seems to act in ways that no longer aligns with its mission.
Do you provide therapy for therapists seeking support?
Absolutely. This is what it looks like to do your own work and I’m so glad you’ve found me.
Therapy for you will look like: 1. Identifying your own history and processing, whether that’s narratively, cognitively, or through EMDR. 2. Recognizing the clients that impact you. Depending on what’s coming up, the approach is different. 3. Working through personal relationships and towards your goals for your life. I draw upon CBT, DBT, IFS, somatic work, and EMDR.
Here are two of the worries I often hear from therapists who are seeking therapy:
- They’ve had experiences of their therapists feeling self conscious due to being less experienced than they are. I specialize in providing therapy to other therapists. I’ve done this long enough to recognize when to use my own therapy and consultation so that this doesn’t impact your support.
- Many therapists have had the experience of their therapy shifting into consultation. As someone who offers both therapy and consultation, I only offer one or the other to therapists to keep clear boundaries around our work together. Moreover, I am not here to judge you as a professional. I’m here to support you in finding a kind, compassionate view of yourself as a person and as a professional.
What are your reporting requirements when providing therapy to therapists and doctors?
I am required to report risk of self-harm and harm to others as well as suspicion of child or elder abuse and neglect. Many therapists and physicians worry that I will need to report mental health diagnoses or substance use to their licensing boards. I remain bound by the confidentiality of our professional, therapeutic relationship and do not have a duty to report you if you meet me for treatment.
I know what I’m supposed to do. How will you help me do it?
I love working with therapists, doctors, and other helping professionals because you come in with an understanding of you’re experience and the things we’ll notice together in therapy. Here’s the thing: Knowing and doing aren’t the same thing.
Even though you’ve been in therapy before or you offer therapy to others, you remain blind to the depth of your own experience. That’s more than just OK – it’s normal. We’ll work together to explore your experience. Your individual experience impacts the ways you see yourself and how you move through your world. And that’s where we need to start to be able to move forward into healing. Sometimes it’s a space that holds you accountable and other times it’s diving deeper into your patterns to resolve them through EMDR.