SERVICES

SERVICES

Supporting the courage to look internally, find self-compassion, and reclaim inner beauty

Conditions treated

  • Anorexia, Bulimia, Binge Eating
  • Anxiety
  • Depression & Bipolar Disorder
  • Dissociation & Dissociative Disorders
  • Family Dynamics
  • Health & Medical Conditions
  • Marriage & Relationships
  • Parenting
  • Self-injury
  • Stress & Adjustment Disorders
  • Trauma & PTSD
  • Weight Issues & Overeating

Healing through Psychotherapy

Early life experiences set a foundation upon which we learn to interact with the world.  Our early interactions with parents and caregivers, and later with near-aged peers (siblings, friends) and other adults (teachers, coaches, neighbors) reflect back to us who we are and how safe or dangerous the world is.  This information is often inaccurate and distorted.  Even the most well-intentioned parents step into childrearing with their own unresolved hurts, traumas, and disappointments. The same is true for peers and other adults.  Each brings their previous life experiences into their relationships, subconsciously impacting how they perceive and interact with the people in their lives. 

As children, we internalize what is reflected back to us in our relationships. This is part of how we come to know and understand ourselves and the world around us. This bi-directional process occurs throughout our lives. We impact those around us, and they us. Much of this happens below our level of conscious awareness. 


Psychotherapy provides the opportunity to explore how we see ourselves, who we learned this from, and how accurately this reflects our true nature. Psychotherapy allows us to address the specific issues that bring us to therapy – the anxieties, depressions, relationship struggles, trauma symptoms, or behaviors we may use to cope. It brings light to the factors that underlie, trigger, and maintain these struggles and helps us find ways to address them. At a deeper level, the therapeutic relationship works to reflect back our truer self, in all its beauty and lack thereof. This allows us space to grow in our understanding and acceptance of who we are. We learn to recognize and name our emotional and relationship triggers, to de-personalize others’ words and actions, to gain the freedom to step into our more authentic self, and to find greater meaning and purpose in our life. 

Trauma, PTSD, & Dissociative Disorders 

For some, childhoods are scarred by traumatic life events and acts of omission (e.g., neglect, early life chaos, impaired caregiving), which underlie emotional, social, and occupational struggles. When these traumas and omissions are severe, chronic, and experienced early on in life, individuals are more likely to develop insecure attachment styles, and experience emotional dysregulation, self-blame and low self-esteem, flashbacks, avoidance patterns, and dissociate to cope. In these situations, individuals learn “survival skills” to manage the context in which they grew up. While these skills help them survive, they also often impair the development of self-esteem, interpersonal skills, executive functioning, and the academic and occupational skills needed to function in the world. Dr. Kobus brings her training in trauma-informed therapy and parts work to help people understand and address these struggles. This work often includes establishing safety and stabilization, improving affect regulation, processing traumatic memories, working with parts of self, grieving losses, developing a trauma narrative, and building competencies.   

Disorders of Eating & Self-Injury

Disorders of eating and self-injury often function as ways to cope with life traumas and stressors, including adverse childhood events and relationship conflicts. When working with people who use behaviors to cope, Dr. Kobus helps them develop alternative coping strategies and to recognize the factors that underlie, trigger, and maintain these behaviors. By understanding the deeper meaning of disordered eating and self-injury and the functions they serve, patients are better able to significantly reduce, and often eliminate, the use of these behaviors. They develop alternate ways of coping that better serve them in pursuit of life dreams and goals. When treating patients who struggling with Anorexia, Bulimia, Binge Eating, and Weight concerns, Dr. Kobus often works collaboratively with dietitians who address the nutritional components involved.

Anxiety Disorders

Anxiety functions as an alarm system that warns us of danger and revs up our body to protect us against threat. While the experience of anxiety can be unpleasant (e.g., faster heartbeat, shallow breathing, restlessness, hypervigilance), this alarm system is important to our survival. It helps us address real threats: activating our sympathetic nervous system to fight off an attack, run to find shelter or safety, or respond quickly to manage a crisis situation. This activation is an automatic response, tied to the ancestry of our species and to the ways our brains have been wired by our individual life experiences.


When we’ve experienced past threats to our physical well-being, relationships, or esteem, our brains can become programmed to err strongly on the side of safety and fire off alarms when there is little real threat. When this happens repeatedly, fear and worry increasingly override calmer decision making and over time develop into anxiety disorders, including OCD, generalized anxiety, panic attacks, phobias, and PTSD. When working with patients who struggle with anxiety, Dr. Kobus seeks to the understand the antecedents of their fears, what functions they serve, and what maintains them. As well, she seeks to help individuals recognize these patterns, decrease their anxiety about being anxious, and develop strategies for quieting their minds and calming their arousals.

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