Carissa Hannum is an active and engaged therapist who lovingly challenges individuals and families towards change. She uses here-and-now strategies to help people experiment with different ways of being within the safe container of therapy.
Carissa helps you to confront patterns that aren’t working for you anymore, whether it’s an eating disorder, depression, or trauma that are keeping you stuck. She helps you to figure out what your vision of health is, and then strategizes with you to find ways to move towards that goal.
Eating Disorders Treatment
Whether you are dealing with anorexia, bulimia or binge eating disorder, Carissa can help you to fight the disorder and regain your freedom. Carissa understands eating disorders on multiple levels. She can help you to learn about the emotional functions of your eating disorder, the role it plays in your relationships, and the cultural overlay of food and body values.
Armed with these insights, you can go about making real changes in the way that you relate to your food. Carissa provides you with evidence-based tips and techniques for fighting eating disorder symptoms that aren’t working for you, and she will be a tireless supporter in your corner.
Family Therapy
Family therapy is one of the most effective ways to help each member of the family to heal. The presence of anxiety, depression, eating disorders or trauma affects the whole family. Regardless of whether individual diagnoses are present, the impact on the whole system is palpable.
Family therapy helps a family to deal with these issues with a broad view in mind. Understanding the “unwritten rules” of your family (and every family has them) can help you to decide whether or not they are working for you. Learning clearer communication and healthy boundaries can help your family to function more effectively, and help the people within it to feel more grounded and connected.
Trauma Treatment & EMDR
Do you feel numb and blank? Restless, agitated, and keyed up? Do you go back and forth between these two feelings? It’s possible that the problem is not you, but what happened to you. There are many types of trauma, including abuse, betrayal, medical illness or injury.
Carissa understands trauma as a mind-body problem. Trained in EMDR, Carissa has the expertise to help your body to integrate your traumatic experience.
Specialties
As a generalist practitioner, Carissa works with all types of specialties. However, there are certain practice areas in which she has particular interest and expertise including:
- eating disorders
- trauma
- family disturbances
- anxiety
- depression
- chronic pain
- life transitions
- grief and loss
