Welcome, I’m Dr. Marlys Rixey

Psychotherapist & Coach

As a psychotherapist, I empower you to enhance understanding of your own behavior, which enables you to gain more effective control of your emotions.

Emotional literacy is a powerful life skill that enhances awareness. This awareness facilitates growth and change, which leads to wisdom and insight.

As a Mindfulness Based Coach, I have the opportunity to focus on goals by helping you to create a specific plan. These can be health related or life and career goals. Coaching is different from psychotherapy. It is an interactive process that helps you cultivate positive lifestyle changes and create new challenges to promote overall wellbeing. This can lead to transformational insights that enables you to access your full potential.

Anxiety Disorders

Feelings of distress are upsetting and can effect your ability to function in the day to day world. Learning to manage anxiety symptoms and the thoughts that trigger them are essential skills that can be learned and embraced.

Cardiac & Diabetes Counseling

After a diagnosis of heart disease or diabetes, your Doctor may advise you to modify some lifestyle behaviors, such as diet, exercise, smoking cessation and managing stress. Living with a diagnosis affects not only you as a patient but your entire family. Even after your Doctor has labeled you “fixed” you may still experience feelings of loss and anger. These responses are normal, and are our way of processing life changing events.

Medical Illness Counseling

Whenever life throws us a curve ball, it takes a team to adapt and heal. Along with your Physician, I am here to help to navigate the new terrain that an illness lays before you. 

Stress Management

It is not possible to have a stress free life. It is possible to manage it well and therefore decrease our susceptibility to stress related symptoms and diseases.  Techniques of managing stress are life skills that bring balance to our hectic lives.

    Lifestyle Transitions

Whether we are transitioning from a new job, a new relationship or a loss of one, life continues to change for most of us.  Sometimes these transitions immobilize us and we doubt our ability to cope. I am here to listen and provide guidance for these difficult and challenging times.

Trauma & PTSD

Our brave veterans are not the only ones who experience trauma and post traumatic stress disorder. Many of us experience tragedy in our lives where we become stuck and find it difficult to move forward. I have worked with trauma patients for many years and I strongly believe that with guidance, one can overcome these dark memories.

My work involves the assessment of an individual and working with them to achieve their goals.

This eclectic process usually integrates several techniques, drawing from a diverse background of mind/body therapies.

Coaching

Are you in transition and looking for clarity? What is the story of your life that you want to create?  Coaching is an opportunity to look at where you are in your life at this moment in time and clarify where you want to be in the short and long term arc of your future.  It can help you create positive change in your career and personal life.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

In this technique, the goal is to help people identify negative and distorted thought patterns that contribute to feelings of distress. From there, one can develop skills which may include a personal self care plan to foster positive life changes.   

Positive Psychology

The focus of Humanistic and Positive Psychology is on personal growth rather than pathology.

 This enables the process of realizing and expressing ones own capabilities and creativity, and emphasizes an individuals drive toward self actualization.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness is an intentionally focused awareness of ones immediate experience.  The aim is to become grounded in the present moment while learning to objectively observe the internal experience of thoughts, emotions, sensations and surroundings.

Meditation and Guided Imagery

Learning to control our whirling minds through focused attention is a skill that benefits our physical health, such as lowering blood pressure, to increased feelings of well being. Guided meditation is a way to develop the concentration necessary for what we refer to as “mental strength” (used in sports psychology).  This awareness and concentration deepens our sense of calm both physiologically and mentally.

Breathwork and Energy Medicine

Mind/Body oriented exercises are an effective way to help foster your well being. Conscious breathing in itself is a healing art.  It has the power to release stress and tension, increase energy and help to regulate emotions.  Simple movements with breath enable our bodies and minds to bring balance to our energy systems.