I AM A THERAPIST WHO GUIDES CLIENTS INTO DEEP WORK.
MY CLINICAL FRAMEWORK
I have come to know that we each have what is needed for our own health and well-being within us. What we need is assistance in uncovering this inner wisdom and working through the layers of conditioning that keep us disconnected from our truest selves. I thus increasingly see guidance as the most fitting label for what I offer to my clients. This also means I experience our work together as deeply collaborative. I offer an integrated variety of tools and a cultivated set of qualities for navigating your journey to your truest self, as well as extensive experience using them all in the service of healing for myself and others. You will bring your authentic needs, concerns, preferences and responses to my offerings, which in turn helps me to know what to offer next. While there will be times when advice and/or education (such as effective communication skills) are a useful part of what I can offer you, the primary aim of this collaborative approach is for me to assist you in coming to your own answers and with connecting to your own inner resources for doing this outside of sessions.
My clinical specialties lie in somatic and transpersonal exploration
as my personal and professional experience has found these methods of work to be most transformational, most able to bring about significant, lasting change. That said, throughout my career I have immersed myself in learning and clinical experience with many other theoretical frameworks (i.e., cognitive-behavioral, psychodynamic, existential) and their associated clinical tools. What I have come to understand is that they each offer valuable and interrelated pathways for identifying and releasing conditioned patterns and the art of counseling and guidance is intuiting when one approach will be most helpful for a particular person, at a particular time. I am not a loyalist to a theoretical framework; I am a loyalist to my clients and to what will best serve you at any given time in our work together.
I strongly encourage all of my clients to try somatic work
at some point in our time together, as many of our conditioned patterns are partially or fully unconscious, and thus live in our body, not our mind. Somatic work allows you to access these levels of conditioning in a way that is simply not possible with talking and intellectual-focused methods and allows you the fullest access to your inner wisdom and truest self. The specific somatic modality I am a graduate of is called The Hakomi Method, and I am currently working towards certification in this method.
Transpersonal means including and going beyond the personal.
In essence, our connection to and understanding of our place in the larger scheme of things, our sense of spirituality and/or of greater meaning in the world. My extensive education, training, and personal experience in the transpersonal aspects of human experience means that I am happy to guide you in deepening your personal work into these vaster realms of experience if you so desire. Importantly, the transpersonal includes the personal, and thus venturing most effectively into our connections beyond the personal must first be anchored in a deeper understanding of the personal. The two are inextricably linked.
Couples Work
Much of what I describe about my individual work applies to my work with couples. There is more focus on communication skill building with couples, as such skills provide the effective framework for partners to better understand, empathize and successfully problem-solve with one another. Much like my individual work, I am not here to tell you what is most important in your relationship, what most needs attention, what solution to your problems is best. I am here to offer guidance in how to figure that out with one another, within a communication framework that is loving, respectful to both partners, and leads to true and satisfying resolution in areas of conflict.