Without an adequate understanding of both the organic and environmental factors that create and maintain emotional distress, neurological patients may experience a rapid decline in functioning. Often these emotional reactions contribute to secondary stressors such as family disruption, loss of job, and financial strain. Individual psychotherapy is essential to help patients increase an understanding an awareness of their neurological condition.
Common emotional reactions to neurological impairment include:
- Depression
- Anxiety
- Irritability and frustration
- Post traumatic stress
- Decreased self-esteem
- Changes in attitudes/identity
- Heightened stress
- Fear of driving or riding in a car after a motor vehicle accident
Our individual psychotherapy focuses on:
- Education patients and family members about brain injury
- Helping with concerns about prognosis
- Providing support and advocacy
- Employing relaxation techniques
- Using exposure based therapy and desensitization for traumatic stress
- Working through loss and grief
- Exploring what needs to be changed in the patients’ long-accustomed identity
- Facilitating communication, often by meetings with significant others
- Teaching pacing and self-care
- Decreasing stress by helping patients structure their environment differently
- Helping patients manage chronic pain
- Increasing awareness of the effect of emotions on cognitive functioning
- Communicating with other providers, for example, in regard to the need for psychotropic medication
