In-person Evening & Saturday Therapy for
Anxiety, Self-Identity, Depression, & Trauma
“When a person realizes he has been deeply heard, his eyes moisten. I think in some real sense he is weeping for joy. It is as though he were saying, "Thank God, somebody heard me. Someone knows what it's like to be me".”
~ Carl Rogers, humanistic psychologist & therapist
The Following Are the Therapeutic Modalities Central to My Practice
Client-centered Individual Therapy
Have you ever been searching for your sunglasses only to look in the mirror and realize they were on your head the whole time? By reflecting your reality from an outside perspective, I can help you gain self-awareness and take action to improve your relationships, cultivate inner peace, and stop letting the past dictate your present.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
You already know some of life’s toughest problems don’t have solutions. Their effects can only be managed. ACT teaches that your essential Self isn’t just the everchanging tides, you are actually the entire sea. You’ll learn to de-fuse emotions from events, stay present, and take committed action based on your values.
Emotionally-Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT)
Relationships might feel too shallow to be fulfilling, or too lopsided for your needs to be honored. Some even feel painful and unsafe, but you can’t figure out how to step away. EFIT was developed to help you understand why this keeps happening. By realizing the attachment dynamics underpinning your relationships, you’ll be able to offer your inner child the support that was missing at the time and feel empowered to trust and respect yourself.
Clinical Hypnosis & Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
These techniques help you to access the resources of your own mind. Hypnosis can help to build a more robust self-esteem, reduce stress and anxiety, and serve to reframe the past. EMDR uses alternating left and right bodily stimulation to prepare the nervous system to process intense emotions. Imagine EMDR as baking a cake. Your traumatic memories, troubling physical sensations, and negative beliefs about yourself are the eggs, sugar, and flour. EMDR integrates these “ingredients” and produces something completely new. The experiences are still a part of your story in the same way that the eggs and sugar are parts of the cake, but they have been transformed and integrated into something completely unrecognizable from their original forms.
Ready?
You’re tired of feeling angry, sad, and overwhelmed. You’ve devoted yourself to improving the lives of everyone else, and now, you’re curious about what life has to offer you.
Set.
Schedule a free 30-minute consultation. Together we’ll discuss what you’re looking for from therapy. If your goals align with what I’m able to offer, we’ll schedule your first session. If another therapeutic avenue would be more beneficial based on your needs, I can provide referrals to colleagues and resources that can assist you best.
Grow!
Therapy can help you feel safer, improve emotional regulation, boost self respect, foster healthy relationships, and gain the bandwidth to live life to the fullest.
Frequently Asked Questions on Mental Health Counseling in Mt. Dora, FL
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Weekdays until 5 pm:
50-minute Individual Session $150
Weekday Evenings 5-7 pm:
50-minute Individual Session $175
Saturday 10 am to 4 pm:
50-minute Individual Session $185
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The practice is private pay only, and I do not participate with insurance plans.
Choosing to remain out of network allows me to provide care based on your individual needs rather than insurance requirements. It also offers greater privacy, as insurance companies typically require a mental health diagnosis and may request information about your treatment.
If your insurance plan includes out-of-network benefits, I can provide a superbill for you to submit for possible reimbursement. Clients frequently elect to pay for sessions with their HSA or FSA card when available.
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I specialize in care for the individual. In some cases, a client and I may deem it helpful to invite a loved one to a therapy session. These instances are single sessions or short-term. I am happy to provide local referrals for couples and family counseling.
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I’ve trained to help adults who are struggling with the effects of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), Post traumatic injuries (PTSD), and complex PTSD. These experiences often result in anxiety, persistent sadness, grief, low self-esteem, relationship challenges, perfectionism, people-pleasing, codependency, emotional overwhelm, and chronic stress. I also partner well with folks working through life transitions like a newly empty nest, divorce, and retirement.
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Trauma is not defined by the severity of what occurred, but by how severely the event overwhelmed your ability to cope. It’s not only a single horrible incident. Complex traumatic injury results from ongoing experiences such as bullying, relentless criticism, neglect, or living in an unpredictable or unsafe environment. You may not have even been a direct victim. Vicarious trauma is a result of witnessing another’s suffering. Examples include seeing or hearing domestic abuse between caregivers or a caregiver and sibling, healthcare providers or parents caring for a patient or child with a serious illness or injury, first responders encountering life and death scenarios, and loved ones of military members.
If your experience has negatively impacted how you see yourself and the world, you may benefit from trauma-focused therapy.
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The Adaptive Information Processing (AIP) model is the theory behind EMDR therapy. It suggests that the brain is naturally capable of integrating difficult experiences into one’s history without lasting distress. However, when an event is overwhelming, past experiences may continue to influence your emotions, beliefs about yourself and the world, and reactions in the present.
EMDR therapy helps reframe these memories so they are stored in a healthier, more adaptive way. You won’t forget what happened, but the memories lose their emotional intensity. As a result, many people experience relief from anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, or relationship problems.
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Yes, adding EMDR as a temporary adjunct to traditional talk therapy is common. The technique works well if you’ve already learned distress tolerance skills and have insight into the impact of your past from your foundational work in counseling. If you wish for your primary therapist to coordinate care, a release of information will allow for collaboration on a treatment plan for EMDR. Some clients pause talk therapy while they focus on EMDR, and resume after their goals have been met, and some attend sessions concurrently.
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While the eye movement, tapping, or tones that EMDR is known for take place during stages 4-6, the approach follows a structured eight-phase approach to maximize efficacy. They are: 1.) History & Treatment Planning; 2.) Preparation; 3.) Reprocessing; 4.) Desensitization; 5.) Installation; 6.) Body Scan; 7.) Closure; 8.)Reevaluation.
Completing all eight phases to reprocess a single traumatic event usually takes about three sessions. Some memories and complex trauma may take longer. For this reason, it can be useful to book multiple sessions back to back with breaks as needed for an “EMDR intensive.” The overall length of treatment varies from person to person, and the plan evolves based on your response to the technique. More information can be found on the EMDR International Association’s website here.
To book EMDR therapy in Mt. Dora, schedule a 30-minute free consultation with Marie Howlett, LMHC today.
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Yes. Telehealth is a valuable alternative to face to face sessions for clients who I have already assessed in-person but may have short-term scheduling, transportation, or health-related issues which prevent them from joining me in the office.
The therapy room was designed to provide you with a private, distraction-free environment that supports deeper focus and connection. Sharing physical space helps us to engage more of our senses to perceive each other’s non-verbal and unconscious forms of communication. For techniques such as EMDR, in-person sessions can make it easier to stay present and engaged throughout treatment.