My Approach to Therapy

 

Areas of Practice

Anxiety
Attachment & Differentiation (Boundaries)
Conflict, Communication Skills, & Assertiveness

Depression & Disordered Mood
Eco-Anxiety and Climate Grief
Emotional Dysregulation
Gender Identity & Sexual Orientation

Grief & Loss
Intimacy & Relationship Issues
Self-Worth
Trauma Recovery & Self-Regulation

My Therapeutic Approach

Compassionate

My first priority is to create a therapeutic atmosphere of safety and support so that you can work through whatever you’re bringing to session. I’ll help you find your way to creating your own particular version of wholeness and life satisfaction.

 
 

Collaborative

Because you are the best authority of your own experience and vision for life, we will work together to uncover your particular psychological challenges and develop concrete goals and solutions as treatment progresses. 

 
 

Holistic

I will help you understand the core issues and patterns that are leading to distress, using a combination of approaches, strategies and tools tailored for your needs. I’ll not only help you shift unhealthy thinking, but also address entrenched emotional and physiological patterns and reactions.

 
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Conscious Being

Relationship to Self: When you learn to witness yourself in the present moment with compassion and curiosity, you become more available to yourself. Conscious Being is the process of shifting out of stuck patterns through this practice of compassionate witnessing and curious inquiry.

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Conscious Connecting

Relationship to Loved Ones: As you become available to yourself, you become more available within your relationships. Conscious Connecting means learning how to communicate consciously and bring that same gift of self compassion and curiosity to your connection with your loved ones.

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Conscious Visioning

Relationship to Community: From a place of increased consciousness, you can turn our attention to your life vision. What are your dreams and your passions? Through Conscious Visioning, you become more available to your community. The world needs our personal and collective visioning.

Therapy Models I Work With

Internal Family Systems (IFS)

Internal Family Systems (IFS) is the primary therapeutic lens through which I approach my healing work. It is a highly effective and compassionate way of working that makes room for the underbelly of us. A more harmonious and fruitful relationship is forged with the inner child, critic, and all the parts of ourselves that are focused on self-protection or want to be heard, heeded and healed. IFS is a safe and gentle process for the renegotiation of old patterns and trauma. It is also useful for creating more conscious and compassionate relationships, either with our partners or across difference within our communities. Check out these demonstrations of the models of individual and relational therapy and the article below on how IFS can address the burdens of cultural oppression:

IFS (personal): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0VW-J97sY0

IFIO (interpersonal): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ro5IkuQYqR8&t=1397s

IFS (cultural burdens): https://www.psychotherapynetworker.org/magazine/article/2490/working-with-our-internalized-racism/cf2487e2-1fc0-4238-b567-7b8d48032005

Somatic-based therapy

Somatic or body-oriented information is an important part of the Internal Family Systems (IFS) inquiry and therapeutic response. Making room for somatic experience can assist pain, tension and incomplete fight/flight or 'freeze' patterns to be validated, witnessed and processed. The IFS approach is particularly useful for developmental/childhood trauma and allows parts that may be holding trauma somatically to move from trauma to transformation. My previous training in Somatic Experiencing only increases my understanding of the role of the body in storing and representing trauma events.

Mindfulness

Internal Family Systems (IFS) is inherently a mindfulness inquiry, recognizing and acknowledging the often limited, extreme and even contradictory feeling/sensing/thinking patterns that can also be held by specific parts of our psyche. A deep inquiry into the origins of these patterns and a compassionate witnessing of the role that these sometimes difficult and damaging patterns play in our psyche and our lives allow these beliefs, energies and burdens to be attended to and, eventually, released. The deep inquiry allows compassionate witnessing of internal and external experience in order to become consciously aware of thoughts, feelings and reactions.

Couples Therapy

note: I am not currently accepting couples clients into my practice. However, if appropriate, I can offer my individual clients limited psycho-educational sessions with partners present, in order to explore mindful communication together. My approach can result in the development of a safe, bonded space where each partner learns to show up as their own "primary caretaker of their own heart" (Dick Schwartz), leaving their partner free to be the all-important "secondary caretaker". Specific strategies for communication, managing conflict, healing betrayal, and renewing lost connection emerge out of that understanding of internal and interpersonal relationality.