Linda specializes in treating a spectrum of inter-related, often co-occurring, disorders in the three broad categories of ADDICTIONS, TRAUMA and RELATIONSHIP DIFFICULTIES as follows:

Addiction: "When some demands more and more is not enough" (anon) to the detriment of your relationships, job, health, and creative growth. Accept help to deal effectively with alcohol & other drugs, food, codependent relationships, sex, money, workaholism & beyond.

Co-dependency: Release your desperation about another's addiction and start to live from the heartbeat of your own life. Co-dependency is the inability to stay focused on getting your own needs met because of an excessive focus outside of yourself. See below for common symptoms.

Depression and Anxiety: are often the natural consequences of traumatic experiences which need attention. See Trauma and Grief below.

Trauma: Work through traumatic events that inhibit your natural ability to live with vitality and spontaneity in the here and now. When combined with other factors trauma can become a powerful driver of addiction, compulsive behavior and co-dependency, most often accompanied by depression or anxiety. Trauma is any experience in which a person's mental and emotional resources are overwhelmed causing high anxiety, emotional shut-down, feelings of emptiness, a sense of fragmentation (feeling like one is in bits and pieces and no-thing fits together), immobilization (difficulty moving forward and making decisions) or hopelessness and despair. Childhood trauma has the most profound impact because the brains and nervous systems of children are immature and thus immediately vulnerable to traumatic assault. This also makes immediate intervention crucial though it is often absent due to parental neglect, emotional abandonment or some other form of abuse.

Grief Work: Doing effective reparative grief work can provide relapse prevention insurance and help alleviate or eliminate anxiety and depression allowing your natural vitality and spontaneity to re-emerge. Long term recovery can be threatened by unprocessed grief which includes anger and rage from profound losses. These may include divorce, job loss, death, trauma and childhood emotional abandonment, neglect or abuse.

Low Self-Esteem: Become your own beloved by discovering the powers of self-knowledge, self-acceptance, self- responsibility and self-love.

Physical and Sexual Abuse: restore the breach of your birth-given rights by claiming safety and the ability to handle your feelings in self enhancing ways. Learn a grief process that can liberate you into resiliency, emotional freedom and more happiness than you ever thought possible. See Trauma and Grief Work above.

Compulsive Overeating: Reclaim a healthy relationship with food, feelings, and the sacred temple of your body. Food disorders are a result of using food for comfort or control to numb feelings while ignoring the consequences to your physical and mental health.

Adult-Child Issues: Become the person you choose and are meant to be by learning to let go of historical patterns of coping with the difficulties you faced in childhood.

Some Common Symptoms of Co-Dependency: Cautionary Note: We all have these behaviors, to some degree. I believe it's called being human. The question is how many, how frequently, and how stressed-out you become as a result of repetitive behavior. Additionally, are you getting feedback you're not paying attention to but need to? If you read further please be compassionate and non-judgmental as well as realistic to the best of your ability.

• People pleasing - managing other peoples' feelings so they will like you, not be displeased or angry with you, or to avoid conflict.
• Taking care of others at the expense of oneself, which is often motivated by resentment, obligation, depletion or fear.
• Having to be in control, know what the plan is, to do it oneself because no one else can be trusted to do it.
• Having to be right and not apologizing for mistakes or offenses to others.
• Being painfully "allergic" to criticism.
• Interpreting criticism as rejection.
• Interpreting rejection as abandonment.
• Wishing for, longing for, fantasizing about, chasing after the one relationship, high or thing that will finally fill you up.
• One up, one down - elevating yourself while putting the other down or vice versa.
• Functioning in extremes, lacking balance or moderation, thinking or feeling in all or none, right or wrong and good or bad polar opposites.
• Harboring resentments while believing others do not recognize or care about your needs, feelings or experiences. Feeling under appreciated.
• Feeling empty, not enough, less than and looking to be filled up from outside yourself.
• Having to jump in and fix it, make things better when someone else is in pain, conflict or has a problem without checking in with what they really want or need.

Call Linda L. Moody: 734-662-0761
or email linda@spiritquestpsychotherapy.com
in Ann Arbor or Bingham Farms, MI