Dr. Beatriz Mann

I work with college students who require a little more support adjusting to the overwhelming demands of college life.  Less structure, less accountability, and less authority oversight can sometimes lead to more anxiety, more procrastination, and more isolation. I utilize Cognitive Behavior Therapy as well as Dialectical Behavior Therapy skills to keep budding adults on track so they feel empowered, successful, and focused on their goals and academics.

Anxiety and panic attacks can feel overwhelming and intense for many people. Whether it is social anxiety, general anxiety, OCD, or panic, we can work together so you feel calm, safe, and in-control of your emotions. I utilize Exposure Response Prevention and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy techniques to reduce anxious thoughts and behaviors to a manageable level so you can live your best life.

I work with professionals who find that they have a hard time saying no and find themselves overwhelmed. This might look like people who on the surface, seem like they have everything, but underneath it all they are still depressed, anxious, or just generally dissatisfied. I work with clients to looking to find balance, who want to find their passion again, or who are generally interested in increasing their overall quality of life. Depending on what the issues are that are impacting my client, I generally work to “match” my clients with the best evidence-based care that directly links and targets the behaviors or emotions they would like to change!

Someone might read this descriptor and think, “why would anyone what to change being a perfectionist?” Research shows that perfectionistic tendencies can actually have a negative impact on people’s happiness and their ability to connect with others! It is also exhausting, as so much more work, resources, and effort often have to be used to try and achieve a level of perfection that oftentimes is not even attainable! In short, you may find that you have too much of a good thing. Thankful, there is an evidenced-based treatment, called Radically Open Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (RO DBT) that can help! Through RO DBT, I work with clients to see how their perfectionism might actually be getting in the way of their goals, and work to find skills to help slow down and loosen up, to be able to enjoy their lives, instead of working tirelessly to perfect it (while missing out on it at the same time!)

In a world in which we can connect so easily, research suggests that we actually feel more and more alone. As a society, we seem to have more and more acquaintances, and less true friends with whom was can be genuine or vulnerable. Maybe you have a secret worry that no one really likes you? Maybe you find in your effort to do things right, that it pushes people away? Or maybe you send so much time making sure everyone is okay and appeasing others, that you actually have very little time to truly connect. It could be that your anxiety or chronic depression keeps you feeling stuck and disconnected. Whatever the case may be, therapy can help to increase social connectedness which can help us be more open to life’s experiences!

I work with people who have experienced trauma. Before I move on from there, however, I feel that it is important to clarify what I mean by trauma as there are a lot of misconceptions able what “counts” as trauma. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines trauma as: “act + impact.” And that is it. There is no list of what counts as a traumatic act, and there is not a list of what that impact “has” to look like. So if you have gone through something that was difficult in your life, like a loss, a car accident, a dog attack, and yes, abuse, AND you find that it is impacting your day-to-day life, then chances are a trauma approach might be helpful to you! I am a Certified Specialist in Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and provide evidence-based care to my clients so that they can take back their lives. I work with my clients to help shift their narrative, working with them to develop effective coping strategies.

FBT — Family Based Treatment

Family Based Treatment (FBT) is currently the only evidence-based treatment that helps adolescents struggling with Anorexia Nervosa. FBT is also commonly referred to as the Maudsley approach. FBT involves weekly family therapy that works with the family, particularly the parents to help empower them to feed their child and fight against the eating disorder. FBT typically begins with parents focusing on weight restoration of the child or teen (Phase One), then parents working to give some of the food-decision making power back to their child (Phase Two), and finally moving on to working with the teen to continue to challenge ED behaviors as well as other co-morbid mental health struggles, like anxiety or depression.

RO-DBT — Radically Open Dialectical Behavior Therapy

Radically Open Dialectical Behavior Therapy (RO DBT) is a breakthrough, evidence-based treatment that helps those struggling with overcontrol, which can lead to the development of chronic depression, treatment-resistant anxiety, obsessive compulsive personality disorder, and anorexia nervosa. What does “overcontrol” that mean? Overcontrol often looks like people who are rule-governed, reserved, perfectionists, or perhaps rigid in their thinking. These are people who might never be able to “shut off,” take a breath, and be just a little silly. RO DBT included weekly individual therapy, as well as a RO skills class that teaches a new skill or strategy every week. RO DBT works to increase a person’s openness, flexibility in thinking and behaving, as well as their sense of social connection with others. (Dr. Mann is a Level 3 RO-DBT Provider)

CBT — Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) is an evidence-based approach for those impacted by anxiety and/or depression. CBT works to examine and change behaviors that might be contributing to or maintaining one’s depression/anxiety. It also works to become aware of and challenge automatic negative thoughts that might be feeding into a negative core belief about oneself. CBT looks at symptoms, as the present currently, and commits to utilizing concrete strategies to be able to reduce symptoms and get back in control so that you can increase your overall quality of life.

DBT — Dialectical Behavior Therapy

Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is a therapeutic approach originally created for adults struggled with Borderline personality disorder. Although more research suggests is can also be helpful to those struggling with chronic pain, self-harm, and emotionality (which describes people who might be more driven by the emotion of the moment and find their emotions shift often or with intensity). Adherent DBT is comprised of weekly individual therapy, weekly group therapy, phone consultation calls, as well as DBT providers engaging in a DBT-based consultation team. AT ICC, we provide DBT-informed treatment, which usually results in weekly individual therapy. DBT is has 4 key modules that work to provide clients with specific skills to be able to cope with and regulate their often-intense emotions. The modules include mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness. (Dr. Mann is a Level 2 DBT Clinician)

TF-CBT — Trauma Focused-Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Trauma Focused-Cognitive Behavior Therapy (TF-CBT) is an evidence-based approach created for children ages 3-18 that have experienced a trauma and are struggling with some post-traumatic responses, such as hypervigilance, flashbacks, nightmares, withdrawal, etc. TF-CBT uses a combination of CBT, which works to tackle behaviors that may be inhibiting a survivor’s life, as well as thoughts that might keep the client stuck or in a state of suffering. It also uses some gradual exposure, which involves talking about the trauma in a safe and structured way, so that a survivor is able to transition from having their trauma “define” them, to having the trauma be a part of their life story but not the defining feature, in which the client has more control moving forward. While TF-CBT was created for children and adolescents, it is also effective working with college students and adults. (Dr. Mann is a certified specialist in TF-CBT).

ERP — Exposure Response Prevention

Exposure Response Prevention (ERP) is an evidenced-based therapy that helps people struggling with phobias, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and high anxiety. ERP works to safely “challenge” the anxiety (whether is it a specific phobia, a compulsive behavior, an obsessive rule, or a specific anxiety), by creating a hierarchy of fear stimuli. The therapist and client work to tackle and defeat the anxiety or phobia, one step at a time, starting with the lowest level of anxiety-provoking thought, and working our way up to the top. The function of ERP is to literally re-wire the brain so that it can separate the thing that causes fear from an actual physical fear response!