Individual Counseling
I offer a gentle and empathic style of therapy that creates a safe environment for openly expressing feelings and insights. I also can be strong, directive, or interpretive at times, given the needs and unique circumstances of each client. My training is eclectic. Among other evidence-based modalities, cognitive and dialectical behavioral therapy, mindfulness meditation, Gestalt object relations and existential practices significantly inform my work.
Fundamentally, however, I believe that openheartedness and curiosity, and my state of being present with the capacity to guide and teach, are the qualities essential to achieving a successful collaboration with healing and growth as its goal. I promise you: I give it my all. A collaboration such as this requires significant trust, particularly when opening up about what we know we need, or want, to change about ourselves, especially if we’re not sure where to start. These areas of vulnerability so often remain private, leaving missed opportunities for true healing.
We will discover ways to access your best or wisest self as a guide in responding to the many challenges you face. I encourage clients to explore and open into areas of their inner world—inviting in the pain, or anything else in life, that could benefit from compassionate attention.
Far from “pathologizing” issues, our focus will be more on isolating internal thoughts and feelings, personal histories, family patterns and stories, addictive behaviors and traumas that affect your current lifestyle and way of being. All the while, we will be honoring as sacred you, as a whole person with many gifts. Whether you are a baby boomer or millennial, with specific insight synthesized from our therapeutic dialogue, I will support you in discovering your best path forward. I will help you train “to be in the moment” as life is happening. I will tune in to and support your unique experience and way of being (beneath whatever ways you may be mislabeling yourself), and focus on supporting your awareness, your understanding, and your healing. I work well with early wounds and feelings of anxiety, emptiness, unworthiness, shame, grief, and of course anger—in its many forms. We’ll explore somatic practices for stress management, nutrition and lifestyle refinements to develop improved habits, and learn how to manage unpleasantness, discomfort, and pain. If called for, our conversations may be more existential, dealing with death and impermanence, for instance, or spirituality and consciousness.
I encourage feedback about our work together: what resonates and (most certainly) what does not. I want our contact to move continually toward deeper trust, more expression of your truth, and eventual transformation. Regardless of specific individual goals, I invite you to
Seek centeredness, engage qualities that feel natural to you, and continually envision your most compassionate path.
