Therapy Services Offered
Specialties
Megan Ostermick-Durkee works with and has experience providing mental health therapy to adults with diverse backgrounds, symptoms, and diagnoses. Megan is especially drawn to working with people impacted by:
Megan also is skilled at treating people impacted by:
Megan provides an inclusive therapeutic environment and welcome BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and individuals of other marginalized identities.
- Histories of neglect or abuse
- Domestic violence
- Sexual assault
- Trauma-related disorders, including PTSD
- Dissociative disorders
- Difficulty navigating relationships
Megan also is skilled at treating people impacted by:
- Depression
- Anxiety
- Bipolar disorders
- Psychosis, including hallucinations
Megan provides an inclusive therapeutic environment and welcome BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and individuals of other marginalized identities.
Treatment Approaches
Megan uses a variety of treatment approaches and collaborates with you to identify which approach(es) may be best for you based on your symptoms and treatment goals. The main interventions Megan utilizes include Ego State Therapy, EMDR, CBT, MBSR, and Motivational Interviewing. Don't worry, you don't need to know about these approaches or what approach(es) will be best for you, Megan will talk with you more about options once treatment begins and identify with you what interventions to utilize. In the meantime, here is a little bit more about each of these approaches in case you are curious:
- Ego State Therapy is a treatment that focuses on understanding ourselves through the perspective that we all have distinct parts of ourselves that may be activated in different situations. For example, if you’ve ever gotten uncharacteristically upset about something and it just didn’t quite feel like the you that you know yourself to be, that’s a part of you that got activated. In Ego State Therapy, we work to understand your unique parts, which can often include gaining insight into when and why these parts developed. Once you have this understanding, Megan uses a variety of techniques to help you resolve any unresolved issues from the past that may be getting activated so that you can more often feel and act in ways that feel genuine to who you are.
- EMDR, or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, is a treatment approach that extensive research has shown is highly effective in treating many mental health conditions including, but not limited to, PTSD, depression, and anxiety. EMDR is a treatment approach that views many present mental health challenges in a person’s life as stemming from past adverse or traumatic events. Sometimes, we don’t realize that these past experiences were adverse or traumatic until we begin addressing them in therapy. When these past experiences get triggered, they cause undesirable patterns of thoughts, feelings, body sensations, and/or behaviors in your current life. Through EMDR, we use a unique process that helps you gain insight and make new connections regarding past and present events to help resolve your present symptoms. EMDR helps to activate and utilize your brain’s natural healing abilities to reach your mental health goals.
- CBT, or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, is an approach that focuses on the connection between one’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and helps change mental health symptoms through this lens. CBT often includes focused work to help you change thinking patterns and/or behaviors. It may include gaining understanding of your typical pattern of thinking, ways that this pattern may be contributing to your symptoms, and then working to change this pattern of thinking. It also may include addressing various ways that you can change your behavior(s) to improve your symptoms. This might involve working on identifying and engaging in enjoyable activities or facing feared or anxiety-producing situations in a structured and supported way.
- MBSR, or Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, is a technique that utilizes mindfulness to help you improve mental health symptoms. Through mindfulness practices, Megan helps you gain abilities to connect with what is happening within you, both in your mind and your body, and I also help you to connect with what is happening around you. Gaining these abilities can provide many benefits, including a faster awareness of how you are feeling, being more connected with the present moment, being better able to regulate your emotions, and better understanding yourself.
- Motivational Interviewing is a technique to help you enhance your own motivation to change. Sometimes, people begin therapy and are ready to commit to the effort that it takes to make meaningful change in their life and Motivational Interviewing may not be needed. However, other times people begin therapy and know they want things to change, but for any number of reasons have a hard time truly committing to making the necessary changes. When this happens, Motivational Interviewing can help to enhance your own motivation so that you can get the most out of what you truly, deep down, want out of therapy.
