Emma Eskander (she/her)

My previous experience includes working with teens in a community mental health setting, both individually and in art processing groups. I believe that teen years are an intense period of change, identity exploration, and often trying to make sense of your place in your family and world. I love working with teens and empowering them to take ownership over their lives, choices, and futures.

In working with anxiety and OCD, I first want to help you gain insight regarding your experiences and develop effective ways to cope when distressing sensations arise. Then, we can practice desensitizing you to the feared stimuli, as well as digging deeper into any root sources of the anxiety so that this change can be sustainable and long term.

I have experience working in a specialized anxiety and OCD treatment center, utilizing best practice interventions of CBT, ACT, and ERP to help clients take back their lives from anxiety and OCD. To summarize this work, we evaluate your thoughts, beliefs and behaviors + practice new ways of relating to your internal world and experiences through mindfulness + practice facing feared stimuli by practicing new ways of dealing with the challenging sensations that arise.

Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) is usually the last phase of treatment for anxiety and OCD. With ERP, I collaboratively develop a personalized list with each client of the anxiety-producing stimuli that bother them. From there, we start with the low hanging fruit, practicing facing the fears and utilizing your new skills to manage any feelings that come up. This helps us take the "power" away from the anxiety and build your confidence that you can cope!

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is often one of the first tools I utilize with new clients, particularly those facing OCD, anxiety, or depression. CBT helps us to evaluate your beliefs, thoughts, and behaviors, and how you may accidentally be reinforcing unwanted patterns. Our goal with CBT is to make more "space" so that you don't have to take everything your brain says as truth, and have more psychic room to choose how you respond to situations.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a foundational approach that I utilize throughout my practice. ACT lends us the perspective that we are separate from our thoughts, beliefs, and feelings. Through ACT, we can learn to tolerate unwanted experiences (both internal and external) by taking on a non-judgmental, observational stance. I love ACT, because it helps us to resource ourselves and connect with ourselves, so that we can choose to respond rather than react.

I am trained to utilize EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) which is an evidence-backed treatment for healing from trauma and adverse life experiences. This modality can be powerful in helping to create change at the deepest levels of our minds!