Taking on therapy is a challenging step and the work can certainly be daunting. And...the work can be inspiring as well. It can be fulfilling and empowering and liberating. Therapy is not merely an occasional soothing chat. Therapy is about making changes, sometimes big changes, sometimes frightening changes, but changes that can reshape a person’s perspective and emotional landscape and give them a life worth living.

Therapy is an opportunity for many things...

Work through the obstacles of daily life. Work through unresolved pains of the past. Work through the tensions and conflicts of current relationships.

Develop concrete skills for emotional and nervous system self-regulation.

Learn and practice meditation and mindfulness practices.

Gain a neurobiological understanding of one’s mental distress and emotional pain.

Build greater capacity to hold distress and pain and a better ability to reduce it.

Cultivate and experience a genuinely trusting relationship with another adult.

Cultivate and experience genuinely trusting relationship, internally, with oneself.

Express what may feel inexpressible in any other setting.

Refresh one’s feelings of curiosity and wonderment toward others and the world.

Discover or rediscover one’s inner strengths, unique gifts, and capacities for resilience.

Make one’s life a work of art.

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An Integrated Approach...

We can conceptualize this integration through the familiar categories: Mind, Body, and Spirit

Working with the Mind at the Level of Conscious Awareness...

This is a part of therapy where we deal mainly with what is on our minds--our thoughts, beliefs, memories, values, etc. Clients can re-think their situations. They can reorganize their priorities and reframe issues. This is an area of therapy in which clients can claim new meanings for their memories and develop an understanding of where old meanings arose from. They can connect their cognittions with the sub-conscious activity of the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS)

My approach is both solutions focused (forward looking) and psychodynamic (backward looking). Effective treatment demands deep compassion for oneself and for others; it also demands a fairly dispassionate view of the neurobiological aspects of human experience and the natural functions for survival. In short, effective therapy needs our hearts and minds to work together.

Working with the Body and Autonomic Nervous System (ANS)

This is a part of therapy where we deal with the activities of the subconscious mind and its effects on our nervous systems and our physical experience of life. By definition, what is sub-conscious cannot be directly accessed cognitively, but there are many ways to recognize patterned behaviors of the subconscious mind and develop effective responses to those patterns.

This is also an area of therapy where we will consider all the issues of the body, including health concerns and chronic pain. The material challenges of life bring significant stressors to the mind.

Working with the Energetic/Spiritual parts of Ourselves

This is a part of therapy where we will focus on the energetic experiences of life in this world. We feel the energetic presense of each other and of all life around us, and we must acknowledge that energetic force within ourselves and learn to work with it to achieve overall health.

Whether one regards this energy through their religious beliefs and practices, or through other spiritual commitments, or through nature, or through more biological understandings, we can share in the value of mindfulness practices, meditation, and breathing exercises. We can connect our energy with the life energy around us and feel that pleasure.