Mary Blankenburg, IA LISW 01283

A therapeutic relationship is the most powerful healing tool. I build therapeutic alliances, connect, with clients while exploring their emotional lives and histories. I am a psychotherapist with 39 years experience doing individual, couples, family, and group therapy with a variety of client populations. I have worked in a community mental health agency, an agency serving adolescents and their families, and have been in private practice for thirty years. I am also a trained dancer and my psychotherapeutic approach increasingly explores, in simple ways, the relationship between mind and body, and how this can promote healing and well being. I work with people who have symptoms of depression and anxiety as well as personality disorder traits, with a sensitivity to trauma effects, healing, and post traumatic growth. To this end I help clients develop awareness of their autonomic nervous system states in order to learn to identify cues of safety, and use trauma focused skills, such as EMDR and gentle movement, to facilitate a change in relationship between a person in their present life and past toxic experiences, while slowly working to resolve related issues through therapeutic interactions based in developmental, cognitive, and attachment frameworks.
I support clients in increasing kindness for themselves and focus on gently remediating trauma effects. This work is hard but rewarding.