Patti Swope

Vegan Marriage and Family Therapist

About

Patti Swope RN, LMFT is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist specializing in individual, relationship, and family therapy. My mission is to make a lasting and positive difference in the lives of my patients. If you are experiencing relationship distress or want to feel better about yourself, I can help.

I choose well researched models of therapy and I have extensive training in Emotionally Focused Therapy and Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy.

As your therapist, I have a special interest in and can help you with:

• Conflict, disconnection, & betrayal trauma
• Mood issues
• Adverse effects of childhood abuse & neglect
• Trauma
• Coping with physical illness
• Grief & loss
• Vystopia
• Persistent sense of aloneness

I welcome patients from diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds and strive to be culturally responsive, racially conscious, and LGBTQIA+ affirming.

I provide Teletherapy services using a fully HIPPA compliant version of zoom.

What is EFT?

Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) is a method of therapy that promotes feelings of connection and closeness within couples and families. EFT creates safety and security within a relationship that is reliable and constant. These safe and secure attachments to one another are critical to maintaining healthy relationships and improving both our mental and physical health.

In a distressed relationship, we often ask questions like “Are you there for me?” “Can I count on you?” and “If I call, will you come?” When communication breaks down, the answers to these questions can get misunderstood or distorted. EFT focuses on clarifying these misunderstandings and helping develop or rediscover a relationship based on mutual trust and security.

Fights with those we love often activate distressing emotions. We either feel like retreating into our shells or, that we are talking and talking without being heard. EFT sees these behaviors as counterproductive to safe emotional connecting and bonding.

EFT addresses issues at the neurological level. Deep down we all code our experiences and relationships as either safe or dangerous. Perceived distance, separation or potential loss of the relationship is interpreted as danger, and triggers our brain’s innermost functions, those which process fear.

EFT directs us away from our “fight-or-flight” reactions and away from the “content issues” (who-did-what-to-whom, he-said-she-said, etc.) and towards the feelings, emotions and needs that lie beneath.

The EFT therapist is involved and collaborative. She works to stop the negative cycle and to maintain emotional safety. The therapist and couple work together as a team to reduce distressing interactions and to create a positive emotional cycle, ensuring a secure base and a safe haven that protects us from our fears about the self and the world.

What is AEDP?

AEDP seeks to clinically make neuroplasticity happen. Championing our innate healing capacities, AEDP has roots in and resonates with many disciplines – among them interpersonal neurobiology, attachment theory, emotion theory and affective neuroscience, body-focused approaches, and finally, transformational studies. Through undoing of aloneness, and through the in-depth processing of difficult emotional and relational experiences, as well as new transformational experiences, the AEDP clinician fosters the emergence of new and healing experiences for the client, and with them resources, resilience, and a renewed zest for life.

Please visit the following websites for more information

• American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy  – The American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT) is the professional association for the field of marriage and family therapy and represents the professional interests of more than 23,000 marriage and family therapists throughout the United States, Canada and abroad.
• International Centre For Excellence in Emotionally Focused Therapy – The International Centre for Excellence in Emotionally Focused Therapy (ICEEFT) is the home for research and training in Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT)- for individual, couple and family therapy
• Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy Institute (AEDP) is the home for research and training in AEDP.