Welcome…
I work with Children, Adolescents, Adults & Couples
in my Boulder & Denver, Colorado offices
In my 28th year in private therapy practice helping individuals, families, and couples improve their lives..
A full spectrum of services from traditional counseling to EMDR Trauma Psychotherapy to Brain Biofeedback.
I have functioned as a trainer and supervisor of Masters Level Interns in traditional settings as well…
Is life overwhelming at times? Do you find yourself overloaded allot, and more than you think is healthy? Is anxiety preventing you or your child from enjoying life while being productive? Do you feel that you have to go all time and can’t detach from the stress of your work and activities? Are you in need of help during a difficult transition?
Do you find yourself anxious about your work or school day? Are you unable to pull it together? Are you managing your stress most of the time and not able to enjoy the moment to moment experience of life? Have you tried various therapies but did not get the relief that you were seeking?
Today chronic stress and its degenerative effects on our body, emotions, and mind are at epidemic proportions. Because stress is a biological reaction affecting automatic fight or flight responses that are really only meant to be used for true survival situations, not for full-time living, many people are stuck in these reactions as a way of living, with little way out. I have made my career about helping clients heal the effects of unresolved stress (also termed trauma and overload). Unresolved stress drives our anxiety, poor focus, depression, and in general causes our brains to function less than optimally.
Imagine…
Can you imagine actually managing stress and feeling like you can approach life moment to moment without one foot in the past and one foot in the future. Do you wish that you could just let it go and come back into the present moment, able to adapt to whatever life throws your way. Many of my clients have had these same issues and today are finding an ability simply to be more present to what is happening and able to deal with life stress in a flexible and confident way, even the ones who were really struggling!
Is this some alternative approach?
After 28 years of working in full time private practice, I can say from direct experience that most clients need more than just talking about their issues in order to feel better. For a few that has worked beautifully, but for the majority, it seems no matter how much was discussed, processed, visualized, imagined, emoted, cried, had catharsis- that they still felt that things didn’t change that much. Through my comprehensive training a biological model of the human psyche including the nervous system, the hormonal system, the immune system, and the instincts, I started to understand that unless we could speak the nervous systems language, which is not words, that whatever trauma was being carried around inside us, could never resolve itself.
Today, I am able to help a very high percentage of individuals transform their suffering and help them live better lives, all based on their own report which you can see in the client comment area of the website.
How would I know that I am carrying stress?
There are numerous symptoms that will tell you that you, or your child/children are overloaded. You feel anxious, depressed, your appetite has changed, you are not sleeping well, you are irritable or angry allot, you have poor concentration and focus, you lack motivation and commitment, your are disorganized, small things upset you easily, you ruminate or catastrophize about the future or the past, you are forgetful or confused. You just can’t stay focused in the present and enjoy the simple things. You feel like you can’t cope as well as you once could!
I have tried everything and nothing seems to work. Why would working with you be different?
Most of my clients report that they experience more of a letting go of irrational concerns and negative attachments that would normally bother them. They notice their mind quieting and things that demanded energy from them drop away easier. They thus report that their present moment focus improves naturally without their having to “do” anything about it, and this has an impact on their ability to be in the “flow” of their life. They are more flexible all around.
If I decided to work with you, how long would it take to notice positive benefits?
My clients fairly quickly (most within 6 visits or less) see that they are noticing decreases in their stress, anxiety, and depression, and their ability to maintain a relaxed state in situations that would have previously made them tense and unable to transform the pressure of the moment. It does not take long to begin to see benefits for most people. Clients are quietly amazed at how simply working with their brain in the background while we do counseling can produce noticeable, overall physical, emotional and behavioral changes. It is not that you have no problems; but that your problems and issues don’t take so much of your time and energy. You find yourself more presently resilient and less in the past or future and more able to solve the ongoing challenges in your life with more clarity and ease.
How can you help me change these long standing behaviors that I always experience in pressured times?
Neuroplasticity refers to the understanding that our central nervous system (brain and spinal chord: which control our Cardio-Vascular, Immune, Digestive and Hormonal Systems) can change in response to its onw direct experience. If we continue to repeat negative states and behaviors, then we are further imprinting those neural patterns in our nervous system. But if we recognize that when we lose focus or become upset or anxious in stressed periods, it is actually the brain that is ‘producing’ these events, in this moment, based on past, unresolved negative experiences, we can change our direction.
One way that I can help directly is with a form of EEG Brain Biofeedback, or also called neurofeedback, that shows EXACTLY what is happening in your brain moment to moment. Any time your brain is about to get upset, I can give that information to your brain that it just began to ‘wobble’ (use too much energy for someone sitting quietly or called ‘perturbation‘ in physics) and your brain recognizes through the information that it is causing its own problem and returns to the present moment. So I can help your brain learn new patterns of behavior that will be lasting. And all this is happening in the background as we sit together and relate to one another.
The other tools I use are a trauma protocol called EMDR Trauma Psychotherapy for which I have received advanced training and am nationally certified as well as an approach for learning to change brain function called Mindfulness. I have also 27 years of study of the human psychology in a pragmatic Western Psychology tradition rooted in the body which helps me enormously in helping you discover the the patterns in your life that keep you suffering.
And if you also need to talk, we can do that as it can be helpful.
I have never been good at exercises and homework?
You won’t be asked to do typical homework; most of what we do will be during your session. Depending on what your goal and intention is in training, there might be occassional practices that you will be asked to do throughout the week that will support what we are focusing on in your training. But it will be refreshing and not a chore.
I am so overwhelmed, I can’t take on a other thing. And I actually don’t want to be disappointed by yet another program that does not give me what I am looking for.
The benefit of what I do with you will begin to address the overload that is causing you to feel this way. When you are overloaded, you feel like you are at your bursting point and can’t take on another thing. This approach to brain training helps you better cope with the pressures inside you and in your life, without necessarily having to ‘do’ anything; your brain is designed to solve its own overload naturally. It is really all about being present in this moment; we can train your brain to have that happen more regularly. The EEG can tell moment to moment when your brain is about to produces its own suffering event (perturbation), and because we are able to communicate with the brain in its own language about what it is doing, it can drop that behavior it is about to produce, and come back to present. It sounds impossible but is actually true as folks discover every day in my office.
What clients soon experience…
Cients soon begin to have a capacity to deal with what is thrown at them without having to REACT automatically, mechanically, and endlessly in that same old fashion as they might have in the past. Research now shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that an ability to maintain in a relaxed state of mind and body is key to our ability to transform stress. This is what the training approach accomplishes. It reveals what is true about what is happening internally and allows you to transform dysfunctional behaviors that don’t serve your survival.
How have others actually benefited from this approach to training? Read this Case Study.
Five year old John (not his real name) is brought in by his parents. He is is highly intelligent but presently hyper-sensitive and unable to regulate himself in social situations. Prior to doing some training with me, when he gets upset, it lasts for long periods without being able to comfort him. He has been very concerned about locked doors in his house as well as germs. He is even having difficulty sleeping which is regulated my the brain. He is having adaptation issues in a nutshell.
Within a few sessions, his parents, teachers, and occupational therapist are noticing obvious changes. When he does get upset at school, he is able to quickly come back to the present on his own and is happier all around. His Mother told me about him being bitten by a donkey and that soon after, he was playing normally when previously he would have been inconsolable. By training his brain moment to moment with this non-linear, dynamical feedback approach which targets the full spectrum of his brainwaves (brain electro-chemical activity), his Central Nervous System is able to change for the better, since this is its very nature; adaptability or neuroplasticity.
Our CNS (Central Nervous System) is so sophisticated that when given comprehensive feedback in its own language about how it is behaving, it can change of it’s own volition; thus neuroplasticity. We evoke the Orienting Response which is our brains ability for being able to drop everything when something changes in our environment, and innately ask, ” What is different about this moment”. Zengar NeurOPTIMAL training evokes thisOrienting Responsewhich brings us back to the relaxed present where all is well.
I am always happy to receive your email or phone calls. If I can answer your questions and concerns, that is part of my work. After 26 years of working as a therapist, I have learned to listen to your concerns and provide you with what YOU are looking for.
david@david-delaney.com or 303-449-2004.
Also serving the following Colorado cities and towns:
