My Approach to Therapy

Like many therapists, I have trained in a variety of modalities and integrate them to offer a comprehensive approach to work with the life issues that arise in the course of our daily experience.   Addressing the difficulties and problems that bring you into treatment is our starting point.  Beyond that, compassionately understanding your struggles as part of the richness of your journey towards wholeness is a helpful way to work through issues rather than avoid them.  Accepting the things we cannot change, as mentioned in the Serenity Prayer, is also part of the process of healing.  Finally, developing a deep appreciation for your rich inner life, guided by dreams, sandtray, and the creative arts can add another dimension to therapy.  I work with individual adults and couples.

After many years as a psychotherapist, I find what I do best is offer clients my presence, open-heartedness, and understanding.  I particularly enjoy working with people who are wrestling with spiritual issues and questions.  I have supported many through life transitions, both the natural developmental changes of life, and those surprise losses that come upon us all of a sudden.  Making an initiatory journey from what one is familiar with through territory that is unfamiliar and unknown to a new place of growth and life affirmation needs a guide.  This has been my life long study and offering to those who can use a companion on the path.    

A Safe and Sacred Container

As you enter therapy, you are invited into a sacred space, one that offers safety, attentiveness, compassion, and understanding.  My vision of this space is like a sacred vessel, where the work of healing is protected and held.  Like the caterpillar weaving its cocoon to make a place for its changes, the therapy office offers a place where you can learn to let go of old behaviors and negative thought  patterns and find tools for discovering a happier and healthier way to live in the world.

Special Areas of Interest and Expertise

·        MINDFULNESS  - a practice of attentiveness to breathing and your body to bring yourself to the present moment.  Used for calming and centering and to deal with difficult emotions, negative thinking, and reactivity.  Practice also includes developing lovingkindness and compassion for yourself and others – a great antidote for self criticism and judgement.

·        EMDR – Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing.  Used for developing personal resources and for trauma.

·        BODY AWARENESS AND MOVEMENT – the body and how we hold it affects our mood and self concept.  Understanding and working with the connection of body, mind and spirit can release old beliefs and patterns held in the body.

·        RELAXATION AND VISUALIZATION – techniques to help relieve stress, tension, and anxiety

·        DREAMWORK – An important gift in our daily lives, dreams can provide a richness of symbols that offer information and guidance related to spirituality, fears, and the journey of life.

·        PSYCHODYNAMIC RELATIONAL THERAPY – addressing early attachment issues from childhood, this approach offers a deep sense of being held while processing present day and early life disconnections from the self, emotions, needs, and relations to others.

·        JUNGIAN AND ARCHETYPAL PSYCHOLOGY – using mythology and the understanding of underlying archetypal patterns that play out in our lives, this work puts our lives’ struggles into a creative context which gives meaning and depth to our experience.

·        COUPLES THERAPY – training in emotionally focused therapy has increased my capacity to work with deeply held emotional patterns that keep couples in a negative cycle of interaction, when ultimately both partners long for connection.  This work can get to the core issues that create dissatisfaction and separation in relationships.  Learn to speak from your own experience and needs to develop a more intimate and satisfying relationship.