Cultivate

Therapist Spotlight 🌟 Elizabeth is an Associate Professional Counselor specializing in anxiety, depression, perfectionism, self-doubt, burnout, and adult ADHD. She also works with women - particularly working professionals and moms in the middle years - who feel lost, stuck, or disconnected from themselves after years of thinking they are “too much” or “not enough”. Elizabeth empowers women to reconnect with their true selves and chart their own path forward with clarity, confidence and peace.

Elizabeth views anxiety, depression and other types of distress as messengers pointing to areas in need of healing. Her therapeutic approach blends person-centered, narrative, and cognitive-behavioral therapies, along with a strong emphasis on the client-therapist relationship. Elizabeth desires to help women feel seen and comfortable in their own skin.

Elizabeth’s background in business gives her a unique perspective on the professional and personal challenges her clients encounter. After nearly two decades of a successful career in the corporate world, including senior-level roles in consulting, marketing, and HR for Fortune 500 companies as well as fast-growing technology companies, Elizabeth followed her true calling to become a therapist. Elizabeth understands the traps of perfectionism and the pressure of societal expectations; she desires to empower other women to courageously break free and discover their own path as well.

Elizabeth earned a MA in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from Richmont Graduate University, an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, and a BS in Commerce and a MS in Accounting from the University of Virginia.

Outside of her practice, Elizabeth enjoys being outdoors, reading, traveling, and spending quality time with friends and family.

If you are interested in scheduling an appointment , go to link in bio or email [email protected].

Too often, we hear "Marriage is hard." But we have to be careful that we don't take the "Marriage is hard" line as a reason to keep accepting behavior that is not acceptable. We have to be careful that we don't mislabel abuse as "hard."

"Marriage is hard" should not be used to excuse, minimize, ignore, or rationalize the following :
Manipulation
Addiction
Infidelity
Rage
Gaslighting
Financial control
Coercive control
Name calling
Emotional neglect
Threats
Withholding of information
Dishonesty
Betrayal

These are tactics of control and abuse. These are not things that make "marriage hard."

If these things are happening in your marriage, it is not because "marriage is hard;" it is because abuse is present in your marriage.

If this resonates with you, the best thing you can do is start individual counseling to receive the support you deeply deserve.

Therapist spotlight🌟 Sarah is a Licensed Professional Counselor specializing in working with women on identity formation and development, building healthy relationships with others and self, life stage transitions, spiritual concerns, and grief and loss. Her clinical interests additionally include codependence recovery, navigating friendships in adulthood, and women in ministry (clergywomen, chaplains, spiritual directors, seminarians, etc.).

The relationship with the self supports all other relationships in our lives. Sarah’s work with clients centers around exploring and strengthening the foundational relationship with the self, to include: identity formation and personal growth, building self-trust, and the integration of faith/spirituality as desired. Sarah supports her clients in bringing their lives into greater alignment with their personal values, so that they may feel more at home within themselves and more empowered to express themselves authentically. She listens for the wisdom in her clients’ experiences and empowers them as active participants in their growth process. Sarah assists clients with values clarification, identifying and expressing emotions, establishing and maintaining boundaries, exploring purpose and meaning, self esteem/self worth, living and communicating authentically, codependence recovery, and developing personal agency.

Sarah’s personal and professional identity has been shaped by her dual training in mental/emotional health and spiritual health. She earned an M.Div. from Candler School of Theology at Emory University and previously worked as a Board Certified Chaplain (BCC) in the fields of palliative care, hospice, and mental health. While continuing her work in chaplaincy, she studied Clinical Mental Health Counseling and graduated with an M.S. from Mercer University.

An Atlanta native, Sarah enjoys gardening, exploring the North Georgia mountains with her husband, and going on walks with her rescue dog.

Sarah has availability for new clients. If you are interested in scheduling, go to link in bio or email [email protected].

As a therapist, clients will often share with me, "I just feel angry all the time lately. I don't know what is wrong with me."

Anger is a fascinating emotion. Yep, I said fascinating. It is fascinating because it is so informative. Anger tells us a lot of about ourselves.

Anger is a secondary emotion. Meaning, anger is the tree and there are always roots. When we identify the roots- the feelings beneath the anger, that are driving the anger, then we can move out of anger and into action. Otherwise, we can get stuck in anger.

There is nothing wrong with anger, but it is an emotion that we can get stuck in and that can lead to some pretty unproductive reactions.

So often, when we are angry, we are actually feeing:
Scared
Anxious
Sad
Hurt
Disappointed
Grief
Overwhelmed
Embarrassed
Shame
Insecure

If we just stay in our anger, we don't learn anything and stay pumped up. But if we can get CURIOUS about what is beneath that anger, we can uncover a lot.

Yes, you are angry. That is valid! But what else might be going on?

Are you disappointed elements of your life are not as you want them to be?
Are you hurt by someone's actions?
Are you feeling anxious about some aspect of life?
Are you fearful about the unknowns?
Are you overwhelmed by all you have to do and are responsible for?

Identifying those roots can then help you discern what you need and what you need to do next.

The bravest thing you can do is reach out for help. You don't have to keep everything inside. You don't have to figure it out all by yourself. You don't have to shoulder the burden alone.

Cultivate is here to walk with you through this season. We offer specialized, affordable counseling services to women throughout the state of Georgia. We believe you should have access to excellent emotional and mental health care and be able to live free of old hurts and habits.

For more information on our counseling services go to to the link in bio or www.cultivateatlanta.com

Vulnerability and authenticity are valuable parts of forming genuine connection. AND vulnerability and authenticity can also be misused. When that happens, they become forms of boundaryless behavior.

Boundaryless behavior is when we 1.) do not respect other people's personal boundaries and 2.) do not engage in self awareness and other awareness and appropriately contain ourselves so that we don't spill over into others.

What are examples of this kind of boundaryless behavior?

Oversharing
Expecting others to share information with you when they do not want to/don't feel comfortable doing so
Asking questions that you have not "earned the right" to hear the answers
Overfunctioning
Using your children as confidants, sounding boards
Sharing things with your children that they are not old enough to understand
Emotional entitlement (spewing your emotions rather than appropriately sharing them)

We share in relationships that can bear the weight of the share. When we do not practice that principle, we can unknowingly engage in boundaryless behavior and that actually damages the strength of the connection.

When we think of trauma wounds or hurts we have experienced in life, we usually think of the things that were done TO us.

The words said TO us.
The abuse done TO us.
The break up that happened TO us.
The rejection that happened TO us.

But often the things we did not RECEIVE leaves the deepest mark.

The love we did not receive.
The attention we did not receive.
The daily needs we did not receive.
The safety and security we did not receive.
The consistency we did not receive.
The intentional care we did not receive.
The support we did not receive.

Neglect leaves just as deep a mark as the things that happen to us.

Empathy is often be misunderstood, and too often, people think to be empathetic we need to have walked in someone else's shoes or we need to imagine what it is like to walk in someone else's shoes.

That isn't necessarily empathy.

Empathy is understanding the other person experience of walking in those shoes. Empathy is about the other person- their feelings, their experience.

Being empathetic does not mean we imagine what it would be like if what was happening to the other person happened to us. We do not need to insert ourselves into their story like that. That is not how we connect. When we do that, we are making the situation about ourselves- imagining what we would do, what it would be like for us, rather than focusing on the other person's experience and trying to understand their feelings.

Empathy does not mean we join our story to theirs. Instead, we want to listen to understand, not necessarily to share or compare. Practicing empathy is not an opportunity to share about yourself. It is an opportunity to listen, understand the other person, and give them the gift of feeling seen and heard.