MEGAN SCHMIDT, PHD
Licensed Clinical Psychologist
SERVICES
Dr. Schmidt recognizes that each person has their own preferences regarding therapy. You can choose to meet in at her Midtown Atlanta office or virtually from the comfort of your home, allowing for a flexible approach that fits your lifestyle. She is dedicated to offering a tailored experience that addresses your specific needs.
SERVICE 01
Initial Consultation
The initial consultation consists of asking and answering questions to determine if therapy is suitable for you. You will speak with Dr. Schmidt over the phone to discuss your reasons for seeking therapy, current concerns, and treatment goals. This will help you evaluate compatibility and decide if you and Dr. Schmidt can work well together. During the call, Dr. Schmidt will go over scheduling, fees, and timelines, answer your questions, and provide a summary of what you can expect moving forward.
Beginning any therapy can feel daunting, but Dr. Schmidt makes it easier. She will give you honest recommendations and answer your questions so that you feel confident and prepared while getting started.
SERVICE 02
Individual Therapy
Individual therapy is an organic process that helps you heal from distressing life experiences. Therapy takes time, effort, and courage. Gradual changes in your environment, emotion regulation, self-understanding, and relationships help you integrate distressing experiences and resolve their effects on your life.
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At Kinship Psychotherapy, Dr. Schmidt provides expert guidance and support so you can rebuild a positive self-concept, foster self-compassion, and reclaim a sense of identity and personal strength. You'll develop coping strategies to manage your symptoms while you delve into current and past experiences, relationships, self-perceptions, family dynamics, and unconscious thoughts and feelings to uncover and change patterns contributing to your mental health struggles.
SERVICE 03
Trauma Therapy
Trauma affects mental, emotional, and physical well-being by eroding feelings of safety, clarity, self-esteem, and self-control. In response, many feel confused, helpless, worthless, critical, angry, guilty, and even ashamed. Trauma-focused therapy helps in 3 ways: it enables you to cope with upsetting emotions, identify how the trauma affected your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and resolve the negative impact that trauma has had on your life.
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With years of trauma-focused research experience and clinical training, Dr. Schmidt has become an expert in trauma recovery. She will help you confront, process, reframe, and resolve the impact of traumatic experiences. Together, you will build coping strategies to manage upsetting emotional reactions, develop an integrated and realistic understanding of the experience, and change the negative effects the trauma has had on the way you think, feel, and behave. Trauma has lasting effects and while those memories will never go away completely, with therapy, you can gain control over your life again.
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SERVICE 04
Psychoanalytic Therapy
Psychoanalytic psychotherapy is based heavily on research in neuropsychology and how the mind works. The basic premise behind this kind of therapy is that throughout our lives and based on our unique experiences, we develop schemas that serve as templates for understanding and navigating life. These templates naturally get stored in the brain and we use them automatically without even realizing it. While this is helpful to our lives generally, sometimes these schemas are applied in situations that are not applicable or in ways that cause problems. This can then cause issues in our relationships, views of self, behaviors, emotions, etc. leading to mental health problems like anxiety and depression. Through psychoanalytic therapy, you will work to uncover and understand these unconscious schemas, enabling you to change them.
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As a formally trained psychoanalytic psychotherapist, Dr. Schmidt will listen carefully to what you say (and don't say) to help you identify patterns contributing to your difficulties. She will help you understand how past experiences affect your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors while empowering you to make choices that can lead you to a more fulfilling life. Psychoanalytic psychotherapy is an intense form of treatment and is not recommended for everyone. Dr. Schmidt will work with you in individual therapy to determine if this approach is best for you.