Specialized Counseling For Your Trauma and Anxiety

Beth Ruske, MSEd, LMFT, AS

How did I come to this work?

Well, find a therapist who didn’t experience some of their own suffering, and you have found a unicorn, my friend. I learned early to be a watcher and a listener, and I fell into this profession to do the things I had always done: watch, and listen.

But along the way, I learned helping other people alone would not heal me, and I had to learn how those adaptations - the watching and the listening - affected me, my relationships and even my work. I’m a better therapist for it. Now I use the strength of those adaptations to help others sort through their pain and find the strength in them. 

Why do I do this work?

I feel like we are collectively drowning in pain, and most of us feel very alone in it. Alone and in pain makes for sad, angry and suffering people. I believe we need compassionate relationships - with ourselves, with others - to feel like we can survive. I want you to feel less alone, and I believe the more we can find compassion for ourselves, the more we can find it for each other.

What is therapy with me like?

I bring my full self - flaws and all - into the therapy room. It would be hypocritical, I think, to ask you to bring and work toward your authentic self and then just leave my full self at home. So I show up as a human first and a therapist second. I am transparent, honest, and always curious. The most important thing to me is for you to feel less isolated, so I’ll share stories and insight. I go at your pace, because I want you to feel comfortable. I’m not a blank slate, and I don’t do cookie cutter interventions. I curse -liberally- and sometimes I go off on tangents. Also, I tend to run a little late, but you will always get your time.

I will laugh with you, tear up with you, and challenge you. I care deeply about my clients, and I think about the things we might miss during our hour together outside of that hour. I see you as the self you can be, maybe even before you can see it yourself. 

How do I work?

Erratically. And often too much. 

Just kidding. I look for the roots of problems, not just how to fix a symptom, because that is how I believe healing works. If you don’t want to look into your past, then I am not the therapist for you.

I believe in working in phases and we start from where you are. In the beginning, we are looking for ways to soothe some of the pain and anxiety, and this lays the foundation for us to be able to do the deeper healing work. I believe our pain and our history is held in our bodies, and I utilize bottoms-up approaches (meaning regulate the body first before we can change the mind). 

I draw on trauma research and neuroscience to inform my methods, so I trust the interventions I suggest. You won’t respond to everything, and that means we experiment until we find what does.

But…aren’t you a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist? Don’t you do couples counseling or family therapy?

Sigh. No, no I don’t. Not anymore. Why? Because I didn’t enjoy it. And if I’m not enjoying it, I’m not doing Good Therapy. It is my License and base training (and lots of my past experience), but not the work I specialize in now. The work I (or any therapist really) specializes in is the work that energizes us, have trained in over and above grad school training, and serves the people we most want to help. And guess what? That can change over time. 

I was trained as a Marriage and Family Therapist because I believe in a systemic way of looking at problems. Systemic therapy is looking at all-the-everything that impacts you as a human. It’s taking you, your history, your family’s history, your relationships, your experiences, your work, your health, your body, your narratives…everything about you into consideration when looking at what you need to move out of a stuck place.  

So that’s me. If you think we might be a fit - and therapy is all about fit - contact me to find out how we can work together to help you heal.