Clinicians who offer sliding scale payment structures may offer lower or reduced fees based on an individual's ability to pay. Please contact this clinician for more details regarding their fees or sliding scale policy.My Approach to Helping
My name is Elena Fosness and I am a licensed marriage and family therapist (LMFT) in Minnesota. I work with teenagers and adults and specialize in depression, traumatic experiences, and anxiety.
My approach to therapy varies based on the needs of the client I work with. Modalities that I use most frequently are acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), and eye movement desensitization reprocessing Therapy (EMDR). These modalities allow me to help my clients to overcome their struggles.
I see my approach to therapy as a good fit working with teens and adults that experience challenging life transitions and difficult times managing their mental health symptoms. This often comes in the form of depression, anxiety, stress and trauma experience. I work to help my clients in navigating through difficult life periods and learning skills that help them to feel better about themselves and the world around.
My communication style is warm, approachable and supportive. I want my clients to feel comfortable talking to me about anything that concerns them without fear of being judged.
My journey in becoming a therapist began when I first started noticing what effect our emotions and feelings have on our behaviors, choices, relationships and life in general. I wanted to learn how to approach and overcome different life situations in the way that is positive, constructive and that helps me to grow as an individual. I also noticed that hurtful experiences sometimes have tendency to keep people from moving forward with their lives. I was interested in learning about healthy ways of overcoming those situations. That and my natural drive to help people lead me to choose this field.
My approach to goal setting with clients is about helping them to define what is that they want to accomplish in therapy. The couple of the first steps in that process are building trust between us and learning what is it like to be in therapy. After that we focus on defining goals together and start working toward them.
In our first session we will talk about your life situation and how you've been feeling lately. The first session helps us to build an initial connection and gives me some understanding of what direction we may take in our future work together.