My approach
My approach is somatic, client-centered, compassionate, relational, and collaborative. I draw from several modalities including: ACT, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Language and Emotions, Family Systems Therapy, Emotion Focused Couples Therapy, and Motivational Interviewing. Here you can learn about some of the modalities that I use to support you in achieving your goals for therapy. How we work is based on what brings you to therapy, whether we’re working individually or relationally, and on what you feel would be most effective for you. Together we forge a path that feels most useful and effective to us in our work together. When the seas of life get turbulent, it is helpful to have a raft to carry you to shore. The frameworks I use in supporting you are like rafts we use to navigate the movement and the flow of life from turbulent waters to calmer seas.
ACCEPTANCE COMMITMENT THERAPY
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a type of psychotherapy that helps you accept the difficulties that come with life and move toward what’s meaningful and important despite these difficulties. ACT is a form of mindfulness based, cognitive behavioral therapy that helps cultivate greater well-being by becoming more flexible around negative thoughts and feelings and by gaining clarity around what actually matters in your life. Essentially, ACT supports the development of psychological flexibility by reducing avoidant coping styles and leaning into a life based on values, meaning, and purpose.
Emotionally Focused Therapy
Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) is a form of therapy that focuses on adult relationships and attachment/bonding. The therapist and clients map out the relationship blueprint (attachment style) of each partner and how these impact how they relate to each other and their experience of closeness and intimacy. The therapist and clients also look at patterns in the relationship that may be causing disconnection or conflict and take steps to create a more secure bond and develop more trust to move the relationship in the direction of a safe and secure bond.
Sensorimotor
Psychotherapy
Sensorimotor Psychotherapy is body-based talk therapy that draws upon the natural wisdom of the body to tap into the innate drive in all of us to heal, adapt, and develop new capacities. The effects of trauma, neglect, and abusive relationships with childhood caregivers are held in our nervous systems, posture, and movement habits, as well as in unresolved painful emotions and limiting beliefs. To change these patterns, clients learn to mindfully follow the natural intelligent processes of body and mind. New information that often remains unnoticed in conventional therapies is revealed by paying attention to both aspects - body and mind.
Gottman Method
The Gottman Method is a form of couples-based therapy and education that draws on the pioneering studies of relationships by psychologist John M. Gottman. There are nine components of what the Gottmans call The Sound Relationship House, from partners making mental maps of each other’s world, to learning how to break through relationship gridlock. The structured therapy focuses on developing understanding and skills so that partners can maintain fondness and admiration, turn toward each other to get their needs met (especially when they are hurting), manage conflict, and enact their dreams—and what to do when they mess up (because everyone does).
Language of
Emotions
Emotions hold a tremendous amount of energy that can move us toward what is important in our lives, and we’ve all seen what happens when we repress or carelessly express them. Your ability to work intelligently with your emotions is a key factor in determining your overall well-being. But how many of us were taught what to do in the face of overwhelming grief, seething anger, or paralyzing fear? Through experiential exercises covering a full spectrum of feelings from anger, fear, and shame to jealousy, grief, joy, and more, you’ll discover how to work with your own and others’ emotions with fluency and expertise.
family systems Therapies
Family Systems therapists view problems within the family as the result not of particular members' behaviors, but of the family's group dynamic. The family is seen as a complex system having its own language, roles, rules, beliefs, needs and patterns. The therapist helps each individual member understand how their childhood family operated, their role in that system, and how that experience has shaped their role in the current family. Through experiential exercises we address intergenerational patterns, boundaries and family hierarchy, differentiation of self, and relational dynamics that create and maintain struggle and suffering.
We don’t heal in a Vacuum
All of our work places your experience in our cultural and historical context. We explore how the forces of patriarchy, capitalism, racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, colonization, classism, and other systems of oppression affect and directly impact your sense of self, your relationships, and your communities. We are working within systems of oppression and between layers of conditioning that are deep-seated in our culture. These cultural and political structures influence how we see and experience the world. They have been used against us, by us, and through us. Developing an awareness and a critical consciousness can begin to help us untangle from these oppressive forces and forge a liberation based lifestyle.
It’s the relationship that heals
The most important part of any process of therapy is the relationship between the client and the therapist. No amount of theory or frameworks can substitute an attuned and collaborative relationship between client and therapist. I look forward to talking with you to get a sense of what working together may be like. Please schedule a consultation to check-in with each other about your goals and desires for therapy and my approach in supporting you in moving toward them. If it feels right for us, we can move forward with starting the treatment process. If it doesn’t feel like a good fit, I can provide referrals to skilled and trusted colleagues who can better assist you on you journey.