Tera Buerkle (she/her/hers)

Awareness and tolerance are key aspects of creating change with anxiety. Investigating your anxiety with a safe therapist can help loosen its hold on you. I use mindfulness-based approaches, ACT, DBT, CBT, and intergrate dynamic, interpersonal approaches to create a safe environment for you to explore and change your relationship with anxiety.

Sexual problems can derive from many different sources and can be difficult to talk about due to how each of us is socialized regarding sex and sexuality. Studying sex therapy in school, reading research, and taking continuing education courses allows me to sensitively work with clients about sex- and sexuality-related concerns. Please contact me to better determine if I am a therapist with whom you might feel comfortable talking about these concerns.

Complex trauma and PTSD can make daily life challenging and confusing. Relief can come from increasing somatic and cognitive awareness, developing coherency around traumas, and understanding how your nervous system is reacting and why. An empathic therapist, like myself, can help shift perceptions and create an understanding of difficult emotional reactions that are influencing problematic behaviors.

Exploring relational, psychological, emotional etiologies, as well as working integratively with medical professionals to determine biological factors, can help to identify and treat sexual problems. My knowledge and high-level of comfort while discussing sex- and sexuality-related issues can offer a healing experience when discomfort and shame have overshadowed acceptance.

I integrate a variety of approaches and consider which models to use when working with you to treat your specific concerns. The models I have studied and use are person-centered, emotionally focused, mindfulness-based, psychodynamic, ACT, DBT, motivational interviewing, narrative, experiential, and sand tray play therapy.

Emotionally focused therapy is particularly useful when I work with couples. This model is great at highlighting the intent of each person, uncovering foundational beliefs that impact perceptions, and creating meaningful new experiences between partners. If you have tried couples therapy previously and not experienced relief, this modality can be effective in creating a platform for each person to feel heard and understood.

The family systems approach, which I operate from, takes into account the various contexts (e.g. family, school, etc.) that each of us interacts with to offer a better understanding of identities, behaviors, and decisions. Looking at yourself through the lens of the contexts you are a part of can offer you understanding and empathy, key parts of acceptance, which can lead to change.