Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist
Board of Behavioral Sciences, California #130947
American Art Therapy Board, Registred Art Therapist #21-349
About Me
Merisa Bambur is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with the Board of Behavioral Sciences in California and Registered Art Therapist with the Art Therapist Credentials Board, Inc.
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Merisa has experience working with teens, adults and families, specializing in addiction, anxiety, PTSD, low self-esteem, and relationship issues.
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Therapy sessions explore how these struggles impact your relationship with yourself, others, and the world.
The goal is for increased insight, improved relationships (your relationship with yourself is the most important!), and to learn how to control your feelings.
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Together, we will look at your triggers, emotional reactions, thinking patterns and behavior. With this increased self-knowledge, we can deconstruct those thoughts and learn new coping skills to alter feeling states.
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My responsibility is to be an unbiased person in your life, provide a safe setting where you can express yourself freely.
Specializing in Art Therapy, Addiction, Anxiety, Relationships, PTSD.
Art Therapy
Art Therapy is a specialized therapeutic modality that is used to help people communicate their internal worlds using a variety of art media.
If you are interested in using art to express yourself, therapist will provide an intervention based on the issue presented, approx. 10-20 minutes of session time. Therapist will ask questions about the art, digging into the unconscious.
Have no fear. You do not need to be an artist to engage in art therapy. Simply trust the process.
Relationships
The first relationship to focus on is your relationship with yourself. If you're living with a self-critic in your head, you're probably more likely to be critical towards others... get it?
Let's be real, some people are difficult and every relationship is different. This is where challenging thinking patterns, behaviors and communication skill building comes in.
Addiction
Many people struggle with addictive behaviors. This can range from drug addiction, alcoholism, co-dependency, gambling, spending, sex, food, love, etcetera. People with addiction often suffer from obsessive thinking and compulsive behavior, relationship issues and difficulty identifying emotions.
PTSD
Trauma is defined as a situation where you felt your life was at risk, witnessing another's life be at risk, verbal, psychological, sexual, emotional, physical abuse.
When a stressful event happens, your body goes into survival mode: fight, flight or freeze. PTSD is a result of your body and mind continuing to react as though there's a threat when you are actually safe.
Some PTSD symptoms are: nightmares, flashbacks, anxiety, feeling on-edge or hypervigilance, making efforts to avoid people or places of the event, blocked out memories, intrusive memories.
Anxiety
Anxiety can range from social anxiety, fears, excessive worrying, racing thoughts, stomach issues, phobias, panic attacks, shakiness, future tripping, "what ifs," feeling on edge, hypervigilance, restlessness, sleep problems, increased heart rate, muscle tension, heart palpitations. Anxiety interferes with relationships and frequently results in avoidant behaviors.
Teens
Teenage years are crucial to healthy development into adulthood. Therapy helps adolescents form identity, gain an understanding of themselves, learn social skills, improve relationships with parents and learn new behaviors that they can carry into adulthood. Teens carry stress of school, social media, bullying, exposure to drug use, while going through puberty. Therapy helps teens build self-esteem, healthy relationships and identity formation.