Jolene Feeney

I have been working in the addiction field since 2006. I have worked in residential and outpatient settings, both with people who are voluntarily seeking treatment and those who are not. I believe addiction, whether it is with substances or other behaviors--I work specifically with substances and work addictions-- these addictions are forms of poor coping that has turned into a habit. By breaking the patterns, identifying triggers and the automatic behaviors, and then creating new patterns one can overcome this path that is so self-destructive.

I specialize in anxiety and love to help people learn effective strategies that move them from a feeling of being out of control to one of empowerment. Anxiety can be normal, but for most who are seeking out treatment, it has become a way of life. They feel a current of anxiety at all times. This is not how our nervous system was meant to function. Let's learn to calm ourselves and take a more rational approach to our fears to start creating a better future.

Stress happens daily. There is good stress and there is bad stress. We cannot avoid it, yet we can find ways to minimize the impact it has on our mind and body. Believe it or not our mind and our body is connected. What we don't typically realize is that when our body sends particular signals we have pathways that send it either to our emotional center or our information processing area in the brain. If we get emotionally hijacked stress, like anxiety, can become chronic states--which then leads to unhealthy coping strategies. We can work to calm the nervous system, and take a rational approach to life which can eliminate unnecessary stress in our life.

Our body is constantly sending signal to itself. These signals are all part of a rhythm that develops which coordinates our heart, breath, mind, and other things like hormones. Like most things the longer something goes on the more of a pattern it develops. The problematic issue is when we are chronically stressed, anxious, angry or depressed we set a pattern for these rhythms that is out of synch. Our system is not in these chronic states because it feels normal. Biofeedback helps to identify this baseline of normal, and then through simple interventions someone can see how easy it is to get your system back in synch--regular practice starts to reset the body to its more natural state and helps us to have clearer thoughts and more emotional control

CBT has been around for a long time and is known to be a tried and true intervention for many different issues. The main point of CBT is to teach people that our thoughts and our behaviors are connected and empower others to work to change those so that they can have more rational thoughts and healthier behaviors.

Most of us spend a lot of time in our heads, thinking about the past (pains, regrets, upsets, frustrations, shoulds, etc.,) or about the future (all of the unknowns and what ifs that we are trying to plan for). Each of these creates feelings of anxiety, depression, and anger. On top of that we are constantly creating our own narrative about our experiences instead of actually experiencing them. Mindfulness-based therapy focuses on training people to be more present and connected in their life. Living more for the moment and letting go of judgments and managing our thoughts and feelings in a more balanced way.