Helping Women Heal, so They Can Enjoy Life and Love
I’m Dalila Jusic-LaBerge, the owner of Be Here & Now Counseling. I specialize in working with amazing, accomplished women, who yearn for love but feel lost in romantic relationships. I can help you heal, connect to your own emotions, and be ready to connect with loved ones on a deeper level. A lot of pain in relationships coincides with anxiety, stress, emptiness, irritability, and trauma.
I utilize Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, a mindfulness based body-mind oriented counseling, especially effective in treating anxiety, emotional pain, stress, and trauma or difficult past. Read more About Dalila and learn about my background, education, and passions.
Do you feel lost and you don't know why?
- Do you feel like you are ungrateful because you are unhappy?
- Do you ever wonder why life is so complicated?
- Do you feel stuck and unable to make decisions that you know would be to your benefit?
I assume if you are reading this page, you may be going through some struggle and considering if counseling or therapy may be a good option for you. Maybe you went through a breakup or divorce. Maybe you’re unhappy in your current relationship and don’t know what to do about it. Or, perhaps relationships with your children may be rough. Relationships can cause a lot of distress. In addition to these relationship problems, you may experience some stress, anxiety, irritability, or emptiness. Basically, you may be feeling stuck in some way. These difficult feelings and relationship problems often accompany each other. Most of us feel like this at some point in our lives. Counseling and therapy can help us reduce these difficult feelings and gain some coping, communication, or assertiveness skills that will serve us in the future when difficulties arise.
When the Going Gets Tough, Going Inward Can Help You Emerge Renewed
It would be nice if you didn’t need to suffer. But at the same time, I believe when life gets tough it can be an excellent opportunity to work through some of the things that caused us suffering in the first place. I help women manage these difficult times through mindfulness based body-mind oriented counseling or therapy. Often when we get through these difficult times, we learn to appreciate them, because they bring us to a better place and help us be our best self. Counseling or therapy can help you get through these difficult times and make the best of them in terms of your future life.
Struggles that you are currently experiencing can be an opportunity to reexamine your values and focus on what matters for your upcoming phase of life. I specialize in helping women balance between cultural expectations and their own yearning. Mindfulness based body-mind oriented therapy work helps you become aware of how you can live an authentic life.
My Approaches Used in Therapy:
- Mindfulness techniques that can help you learn to be in the present and in touch with your emotions, body sensations, and thoughts. This work focuses on the present moment while creating meaning from past experiences and pain you may currently be going through. This approach can lead to increased self-compassion, gratitude, intuition, peace, and an overall sense of well-being.
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is used to examine and change thought patterns that may have served you in the past, but at this point may lead to more pain and feeling stuck.
- Psychodynamic Therapy helps you gain insight into current behaviors and patterns based on unconscious processes.
- Somatic work based on Sensorimotor Psychotherapy enables you to get in touch with your body sensations as they are connected to your thoughts and emotions. Your experience both good and bad are memorized and stored in your body. Thus, in addition to processing your emotions and thoughts, your body sensations are processed too. This is a very powerful way of working on trauma and other negative experiences because it incorporates all of the above, cognitive, mindfulness, and psychodynamic. Read more about Sensorimotor Psychotherapy
- Existential psychotherapy is based on the idea that we don't feel joy and happiness because we’re not living according to our true nature and values. This is another important component that I add to my work with divorced women. Divorce Recovery is a good time to examine what we are truly about and how we can live a happy life during the next chapter.
- Equine Assisted workshops and groups are powerful, experiential work. It can be very effective because it involves completing tasks during the session, which can potentially lead to faster results. Horses are very helpful in providing feedback on our emotional state. They can sense what neither you nor I may be aware of.
- Groups and workshops are designed and facilitated to address different issues that are helpful for women to improve relationships with themselves, their partners or family members. Read more about Workshops and groups here.
- Discernment Counseling is meant to help couples on the brink of divorce. As none of us got married expecting to get divorced, we may be stuck in a marriage that isn't working, but we are unable to move on. You also may be unable to commit to working on your marriage or relationship. This kind of situation is difficult for both partners. This service helps a couple figure out what led to the marital dysfunction while helping them determine how they want to proceed with their marriage. Read more about Discernment Counseling here.
Mindfulness Based Body-Mind Oriented Therapy or Counseling Can Help You Heal and Feel Empowered as a Woman
My focus is helping women, couples, and teen girls move on from despair to joyful living. Finding new meaning based on deep soul yearning instead of living a life on autopilot is essential for successful healing. I offer individual and group therapy as well as workshops utilizing interventions from Somatosensory Psychotherapy, mindfulness, equine assisted therapy, intertwined with spirituality and existentialism. I do my best work with career or intellectual women who are struggling in romantic relationships.
Read articles about body and mind connection
Why Do I Feel So Unhappy? I Can't See Any Compelling Reason?
Despite their best intentions, our parents didn’t teach us the skill of happiness. Instead, we were rewarded for feeling guilty and being a compliant and “nice” girl. When we felt guilty, we were rewarded by our happy parent. Thus, we wind up being a good girl and please others in order to get that approval and love. When we neglect our own needs, it's natural to become unhappy. We may not even know our own needs because we are trained to observe reactions of others, so we can be accepted and loved. Mindfulness based body-mind oriented therapy and counseling is a great aid in helping you become aware of these influences. When you are aware, you can become free to make choices that will work for you.
We may not even know our own needs because we have been trained to observe the reactions of others so we can be accepted and loved. So, we feel the need to keep the peace because we feel less anxious. Mindfulness based body-mind oriented therapy and counseling is a great aid in helping you become aware of these influences. When you are aware, you can become free to make choices that will work for you.
Goal of Mindfulness Based, Body Oriented Therapy Is Not to Change You, but to Find You and Build on Your Strengths and Resources
In spite of all this, I believe you can find balance and live a happy life. What you gained from your family and culture isn't something negative. Many of these are great resources and strengths. The mindfulness body-oriented therapy and counseling that I practice isn't meant to change you as a person. Instead, counseling with me will help you become aware of these influences and develop appropriate boundaries that will help you take better care of yourself and live a life that's truer to yourself. It's possible that you never tried working on this specifically. You worked on all those amazing things you are so good at thinking they will bring you happiness.
Are you ready to take ownership of your life and live fully?
You can start by booking a free 15-minute consultation to see what the best steps are. I would like to hear from you.
Trauma and Wounding Prevent Us from Feeling Powerful to Make Choices
Trauma limits us to act out of fear and we often identify ourselves with that fear. When we work through those fears with mindfulness, we can become liberated to know ourselves beyond the fear. Just as you have accomplished so many things in life, I believe you can also learn to be happy. That’s something that you choose on daily basis. Every day when you get up you can choose the mindset you will have.
This is true unless you have trauma or wounding that prevents you from feeling you have that choice. Trauma doesn’t allow us to feel free to have that choice. It keeps us very limited in order to stay safe. Body-mind oriented therapy can help you work on that trauma. I specialize in Sensorimotor Psychology, a special kind of body-mind oriented therapy that enables me to help with emotional regulation through somatic processing in addition to cognitive and emotional processing. As regular talk therapy is helpful to process emotions and thoughts, adding somatosensory processing can significantly improve emotional regulation. This empowers you to handle difficult feelings easier instead of being ruled by them.
Mindfulness Based Body-Mind Oriented Therapy and Counseling Is Designed to Help You Heal Trauma and Wounding so You Can Feel Empowered and Free
One of the long-term benefits of body-mind oriented therapy is it helps you learn to be aware of your feelings and your thoughts. This enables you to be more clear and confident about making better decisions.
Body-mind oriented therapy is a very effective treatment for trauma and wounding. Trauma causes us to stay vigilant and avoid joyful activities out of fear we will be hurt again. This work enables you to feel that you have more choices in life.
Because of trauma or wounding in the past, you may live a fragmented life today. The example above is you know what would be good for you, but you can't do it because of the emotional brain preventing you. Thus, you may wind up operating in a way that's not authentic to your true nature. This kind of life often leads to increased anxiety, stress, moodiness, frustration, anger, panic attacks, and so on. Body-mind oriented therapy is very helpful with these issues. Sensorimotor Psychotherapy encompasses Cognitive Behavioral Psychotherapy, Somatic work, and Attachment Theory from a Psychodynamic Approach. It addresses old wounding and trauma by bringing it to the current moment utilizing mindfulness.
Mindfulness Based, Body-Oriented Counseling Leads to Awareness About What Influences Us
When we work in counseling and get in touch with ourselves, we gain more awareness about what comes from us, what comes from other people, what our thoughts are, what our emotions are, and so on. This awareness allows us to integrate our feelings, thoughts, and behaviors. In such a way, you become empowered to feel like you are managing your feelings rather than being managed by them. You can give up fragmented ways of being. This is empowering and healing. This allows you to see the truth in your relationships or in your personal life.
Awareness Leads to the Freedom of Choices
From this place, a place of truth, you can go anywhere. It takes some serious guts to see these truths, but when we are able to do it, it helps us become more confident and go after what we really desire and deserve. Have you always dreamed of having a deep, loving relationship? Or, are you more an independent spirit that enjoys the freedom to meet many new people? Or, are you happy to just be by yourself for now, but open to a relationship in the future? At this point, you are the one who makes these decisions because you are empowered. From here you can go in any direction you desire. I can help you deal with emotional issues that prevent you from getting there using individual therapy, workshops, and equine groups. I would love to hear your story and see what journey you want to take.
Are you ready to start feeling better and live fully?
You can start by booking a free 15-minute consultation to see what the best steps are. I would like to hear from you.
About Me
I’m a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist serving Agoura Hills, Calabasas, Westlake Village, Thousand Oaks, Malibu, Oak Park, etc. Prior to my graduate work in clinical psychology, I attended the University of California Los Angeles, where I completed my BA in psychology and worked in research involving health psychology. I received my MA degree in Clinical Psychology with Emphasis in Marriage and Family therapy from Pepperdine University. I have been practicing since 2006. I provide high-quality services to my clients, and therefore I consistently continue with my education. Besides my specialties in mindfulness based, body-mind oriented therapy and counseling, I’m an EAGALA certified therapist practicing equine assisted therapy. Both modalities are very powerful in treating trauma, anxiety, relationship issues, etc. Read more about my bacground, education, and passoins.
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