Katie Kernodle

Psychodynamic therapy offers us a useful framework for understanding psychological defenses and their attachment origins, including in unconscious manifestations. We all engage in various defenses to maintain psychological balance, but sometimes those defenses facilitate self-destructive and defeating patterns that we want to change. It's a good fit for those willing to examine experiences and beliefs from the past and consider how they're impacting them today.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) helps us identify thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that we want to change, as well as alter the core schemas that drive these patterns. Our minds are constantly creating models of the world that shape how view and interact with it, and different experiences and beliefs can create dysfunctional models. CBT helps us adjust a client's model to be more reasonable and healthy. CBT is good for anxiety, depression, addiction, and more.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) helps us identify thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that we want to change, as well as alter the core schemas that drive these patterns. Our minds are constantly creating models of the world that shape how view and interact with it, and different experiences and beliefs can create dysfunctional models. CBT helps us adjust a client's model to be more reasonable and healthy. It's a good fit for anxiety, depression, self-esteem, addiction, and more.

I use CBT and its derivatives (such as Acceptance and Commitment, Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, Exposure and Response Prevention, and Mindfulness-Based Interventions) to help us address interrelated thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, as well as target the underlying, sustained beliefs driving these patterns. This is a structured, goal-oriented therapy that is effective for a variety of presenting concerns, including anxiety, panic, OCD, depression, substance abuse, and more.

While technically a derivative of CBT, ERP is oriented more toward behavioral challenges, using controlled, systematic exposure to feared stimuli and prevention of the usual compulsive responses to disrupt dysfunctional patterns. I use this extensively to treat panic attacks and OCD, and can modify it to address "Pure O" obsessions that tend toward cognitions rather than behaviors.

I use psychodynamic therapy to explore how past experiences and unconscious patterns influence current thoughts, emotions, and relationships. By bringing these patterns to light, clients can better understand themselves and disrupt dysfunctional patterns. I use this approach to help uncover the root causes, which are often based in attachment and other childhood experiences, and foster meaningful self-awareness.