Individual Therapy

“It’s the relationship that heals.”
-Irvin Yalom

Dr. Fritzges offers the opportunity to create a warm, genuine relationship where patients feel valued and supported in overcoming the challenges that brought them to therapy. Knowing that many patients who are coming from backgrounds of pain and loss, she creates an environment where patients’ concerns are received with respect and care, allowing them to share their story more easily.

Therapy doesn’t offer quick fixes. Instead, patients of Dr. Fritzges find a caring listener who strives to understand their painful pasts while illuminating the hopeful possibility of a better future, paving the way to get there with dedication and hard work in the therapy sessions that follow.

At your first appointment, you’ll meet with Dr. Fritzges individually for approximately one hour. At that time you’ll be able to share your reasons for seeking therapy, and identify what symptoms or concerns you’d like to address. Dr. Fritzges will complete an initial evaluation to better understand how to best assist you. We’ll discuss your personal history, social and family life, any health conditions you have, and explore what symptoms or problems brought you to treatment. You’ll leave the first appointment with a diagnosis and proposed treatment plan about how therapy could help you meet your goals.

As a licensed clinical psychologist, Dr. Fritzges will use a variety of therapy approaches and techniques to help you work toward your best life in all the sessions to follow. Although she uses an eclectic approach—meaning she chooses what interventions to use to best suit each person, drawing from several schools of thought—most patients benefit from a person-centered approach that focuses on their strengths. Dr. Fritzges also utilizes cognitive behavioral therapy techniques, attachment repair, and a variety of trauma treatment methods.

Dr. Fritzges works with many patients who are working to overcome past traumatic life experiences, and put the past behind them so that their present and future can be lived more joyfully and authentically. Trauma can happen across the lifespan and result in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), complex trauma (C-PTSD), attention deficit challenges (like ADHD), and problems with staying mentally present, as seen in dissociative disorders. Since often patients find their most troublesome and overwhelming memories difficult to open and up and talk about, she meets each patient where they are in their level of trust and ability to share.

To work through and heal memories of past traumas, Dr. Fritzges uses an approach designed to minimize overwhelm and maximize healing. She offers EMDR therapy, or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy, an incredible and effective treatment that helps traumatic memories become less vivid and more like a regular memory. In conjunction with this, she uses other therapy interventions too, including ego state therapy (also called parts work), trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy, and short-term interventions like the flash technique and crisis interventions for recent traumatic events. Please visit the Trauma Therapy page to learn more.