Cancer Therapist San Rafael,CA
Cancer Survivor Support in San Rafael, CA and online in the Bay Area
Supportive Strategies for Cancer Survivors with a Therapist in San Rafael, CA and online in the Bay Area
Michelle Baumgartner, Cancer Survivor Support Therapist in San Rafael CA
You just stepped out of your doctor’s office, not sure if you heard the words correctly-” you have cancer.” You may feel numb or your body may be shaking. What do I do? What’s next? How will I cope with all this? Facing the unknowns is frightening.
As you embark on treatment, you may feel anxious or depressed. There are very real fears you carry - death, grief, or losing functionality. As your world is turned upside down, you may not feel like yourself anymore. You may not look like yourself anymore.
The side effects from surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, or medications may have taken a toll on your body, leaving you feeling broken. Your body hasn’t forgotten what you have been through, and you may be holding tension or numbness in parts of your body.
Even if you’ve gotten through the most difficult aspects of having cancer, there always seems to be more scans/tests, or another treatment or health option to consider. What if it comes back?
All of your treatment may be complete, but how do you integrate what just happened to you? You are not the same person. This experience has changed your views about life, your relationships, and what gives you meaning. You may find yourself anxious all the time, now doubting yourself and your abilities. You may have been excited about life and full of vitality, but now it’s hard to find that same energy.
You want to integrate and grow from your experiences so you can feel alive, vital, and create a meaningful life. You’ve been managing on your own, but you can’t rely anymore on friends and family to get you through to the other side of what you are going through.
Compassionate Cancer Therapist San Rafael
I’m Michelle, a licensed California therapist who supports those with cancer, either in treatment or post treatment, to cope, manage anxiety and depression, and integrate this profound experience. Your body, mind, emotions, and spirit have been through a lot, and I can help you not only to cope but to support post-traumatic growth.
If you are preparing for surgery, chemotherapy or radiation, we will use guided imagery for relaxation, support, or to enhance the effectiveness of the treatments you are receiving, or suggestion hypnotherapy to support positive healing.
I can sit with you in the uncertainty, the “not knowing.” I can help you cope with the fear, anxiety, and the grief.
Integrative Cancer Therapy San Rafael or Online in the Bay Area
For your mind, you may need support in managing the thoughts that contribute to anxiety or depressed feelings through cognitive behavioral therapy. Or through supportive inquiry in making sense of your experience.
For your emotions, I provide a caring and compassionate space where you can express your emotions, be heard and validated as you grieve your losses. Or you may be wanting to work with new found strengths, learn how to adapt your life, or explore how to better get your needs met and set new boundaries with others.
To discharge what is held in your body, I will support you in bringing awareness to your body sensations, regulating those sensations, or moving them out of your body so you feel relaxed, less tense, and more whole. I can support you in learning to befriend and appreciate your body and accept the changes.
For the spirit, we may explore what gives you comfort, connects you to something greater than yourself, to how you see yourself and the world, or to what gives you meaning and purpose.
I can help you assess and heal changes that may have occurred in your close relationships, your career, or how you spend your time while either in cancer treatment or post-treatment.
If you facing the end of your life, I can support you to focus on what has heart and meaning, provide you with guided imagery or guided meditation, explore existential issues, and support a transition to hospice care.
Cancer Therapist San Rafael: Empowering Cancer Survivors to Cope and Heal
What makes me unique is that I use an integrative, holistic approach. Healing occurs not just through the mind or talking about an experience, but through embodiment of that experience, through mindfulness and compassion practices, through guided imagery or hypnotherapy, through a simple art process, or through supporting your connection to spirit or nature.
If you are facing a cancer diagnosis, need support during cancer treatment, or are ready to integrate and heal from your cancer experience, you need a place that honors your experiences with compassion and presence. Contact me for a FREE 20 minute phone consultation here. We will develop a plan that supports your healing journey.
My other specialties include coping with grief and loss, trauma therapy, somatic therapy, and women’s health and wellness/menopause transition.
FAQs for Cancer Survivor Support and Chronic Illness Therapy in San Rafael CA
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Guided Imagery is a “directed daydreaming.” It is offered in a collaborative and interactive way vs following a prescribed script. It is designed to evoke all the senses-seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touch. It stimulates the right side of the brain which governs non-verbal perception-images, sensations, emotions, dream. It starts with inducing a relaxing, receptive state. Guided imagery may be used to provide a safe place for support, to reduce anxiety, to cope with a medical treatment, to guide you to some unknown parts of yourself, to help you feel more confident, or to provide guidance about a particular problem. It may produce a sense of spaciousness and a wider perspective.
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Hypnotherapy/Depth Hypnosis, as taught by Isa Gucciardi, PhD at the Foundation of the Sacred Stream, combines elements of Buddhism, shamanism, energy medicine, transpersonal psychology, and hypnotherapy." It is a guided, inner exploration to access support, change unhealthy patterns, or to transform painful experiences.
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ISensorimotor Psychotherapy (SP) developed by Pat Ogden, PhD is a “body-oriented, mindfully-based talking therapy that is used in the treatment of trauma, attachment, and developmental issues.” If you are experiencing anxiety, hypervigilance, emotional overwhelm, irritability, depression, numbness, low energy, worthlessness, shame, insomnia, or body pain, this type of therapy can be very helpful. I first help you to identify a number of body-mind tools to help you feel resourced , calmer, and emotionally more stable. Then, when you are ready, we safely explore trauma-related material through tracking and working with the sensations in your body. We will slowly explore core beliefs from childhood, and the survival and adaptive strategies you used to cope.
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Often when we are experiencing anxiety or depression, we engage in thought patterns and behaviors that perpetuate the cycle of anxiety and depression. Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is a short-term, goal-focused treatment that examines thought patterns and behaviors that contribute to these states, identifies tools to help with coping, and supports reframing of our thoughts to a more positive, realistic, and strength-based appraisal. I often first help you to develop body awareness and somatic tools to use with the CBT.