Take a moment. Check in with yourself. How are you feeling in this moment? What’s on your mind? There’s times in our lives we realize we’ve been living in fear. Not just fright or worry, but F-E-A-R: Fusing with our negative thoughts about ourselves Excessively making goals outside of our current resources Avoiding the Uncomfortable Remotely moving away from our values. We forget our values in moments of stress. We forget the type of person we want to be, want to be remembered as when we

Cultivating Gratitude in Seven Steps By Chandra Michelle Tracy, LMFT 1.  Practice seeing the world as it IS.  We are constantly moving from yesterday to tomorrow, preoccupied with what we need to do or what we did, that we do not take the time for all that is. We are on to the next before celebrating the first, and often do not give ourselves the credit we deserve, when we do complete a goal. Take time to notice all that is right now. 2.  Once you notice what is happening in your life right

Dreams have always been a place of creativity, the mystery that they hold can be a constant source of wonder and beauty, but what do they  actually mean? Dream interpretation takes what was a meaningless dream and turn it into a real life metaphor. What effect do dreams actually have on your life, and how much of your life can you learn from what you dream about?  There are many different theories behind why we dream. Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory of dreaming proposed that we all have

10 Oct, 2019

Hello Sierra Therapy Center Community!   We recently reached out to a group of individuals in an attempt to help them with promoting a community BBQ.  The BBQ is intended to bring together the community and provide warm meals for those in need, but it is also an opportunity to see and meet some new faces in our community.  We are here, and we want to hear your problems and help you through them!  Pitch in and come out and enjoy the evening!  We look forward to seeing you there!  With love,

04 Oct, 2019

Hi! I’m Saki the new intern and Sierra asked me to research on what makes the most improvement in psychotherapy. Therapy always seems to be the answer. Have a past trauma? Go to therapy. Relationship issues? Therapy. Need to vent? Therapy. But what about therapy produces results? Research by the American Psychologist Association (APA) has found that the most effective agent of change in psychotherapy is the therapeutic relationship, which is the relationship that you and your therapist share.

I’ve been asked “what is therapy all about” and my response was always pretty deflective because I struggled to sum it up in a way that was probably true for all therapists regardless of their theoretical orientation. Recently however it occurred to me that therapy in its most general form is actually a practice designed to cultivate non-violence. Many spiritual and philosophical traditions have tenets or doctrines that advocate for non-violence. A number of these traditions expand the idea

Check in with yourself, whenever you feel the need. Mindfulness based techniques help your innermost self emerge. Now you can meditate with us on your own anytime, anywhere! See the following for links to the Youtube channel, new meditations and affirmations will be added every month! Arrival: https://youtu.be/3LPA8i-oVaU Thunder: https://youtu.be/sHS7Xt-DgVc Water: https://youtu.be/Q-NkplvSR9M Be At Peace, Steven Sierra Therapy Center

The Gentle Reader with Steven Cooper    Close your eyes... Take a deep breath…Take in the scent of your surroundings… Now… Listen to the vibrations around you. Without trying to change anything at all, just allow yourself to shift into an Observer role... Check in with Yourself. How are you feeling? What’s been on your mind? Much like seeing yourself in third person... No tension, no anxiety, not allowing yourself to feel triggered...just...See. Feel. Breathe. When we participate in

23 May, 2019

I was reading the words of my yoga teacher, who foretold in the 1990s, that there would be a time when every person would have mega billions of units of information on the tip of their finger, all the time, which would cause a widespread nervous breakdown (Yogi Bhajan). He was right! In the 1990s, we had barely scratched the surface of the information age, but now, nearly 30 years later, we are encapsulated by it. We are facing a world wide epidemic of emotional crises. Never before did we have

Its been a while since we updated everyone, but here's what we have been up to.  In the last couple months we have added some new team members and added another location.  STC (Sierra Therapy Center) is proud and honored to welcome Dena Hall, and Annette Kelso to our team!  Welcome to the team Dena Hall, MA, LMFT! Dena Hall is working in both the Nevada City office and Grass Valley office.  Here's a little message from Dena: “It is an honor to witness another’s journey and to provide them

The concept of acceptance is central to my approach in therapy. So often, others share with me their difficulties with self image, self care, and look at me funny when I ask about Self Love. For some of you, Gentle Readers, perhaps these are foreign concepts. Life shows us, through its trials and tribulations, that so often We can be our own obstacle to contentment, happiness, and peace. Perhaps trauma has manifested in our childhood. Perhaps significant others or blood relatives have molded

"Hindsight is 20/20"..."Perception is Everything"..."The glass half full, or half empty"... Sound familiar? Lately in my Reflections I've pondered this idea of mentally reframing the things that Life throws at us. "Seeing good in bad" if you will. After all, there's the potential for a lot of "drama" in one's life...well, that is IF One so chooses to see it as drama. We can CHOOSE to see it differently. So much of how we operate and respond to things in our feelings and thoughts is based around

Oh boy, have we been making some big moves. Near the end of 2018 Sierra Family Therapy, changed to Sierra Therapy Center. We didn’t change anything inside the company, we are all the same wonderful group of caring individuals, we just changed the name on the signs and paperwork. We also got a new website, www.sierratherapycenter.com, please go by the page and share it with everyone to help us get the word out. Some other exciting big changes that happened at the end of 2018. We went from having

Gratitude seems to be the new hot word lately. I have to admit, I'm bought in.Yes, I do believe in the power of positive thoughts, affirmations and quantum attraction. Today, I decided to do some research on the science behind gratitude in relationships (being that I'm a relationship therapist) and came across a very interesting research study from the University of Georgia. The study revealed that a key ingredient to improving marriages is gratitude. Believing that your spouse deeply

I often get asked what my approach is to couples work. I always respond that I pull from many theories depending on the needs of my couple. One theory that I often use is EFT. Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT) is an approach to couples therapy that looks at the attachment bond between couples and instead of seeing the conflict as a problem, we look at conflict in terms of unmet need. For example, partner one complains that the other never has time for them and is always rushing about and

Therapy is a way to get in touch with yourself, get to know yourself and get to know other people as well. Another way is through personality testing like the Myers-Briggs personality test and the Enneagram. The Myers-Briggs a few times to help direct me in career choices but not as often used as a tool for self-discovery. There is a great book: The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery by Ian Morgan Cron and Suzanne Stabile. Reading this book, one can be better understood as