My Approach to Helping
NOTE: No immediate openings. OREGON ONLY. WAIT LIST ONLY. TELETHERAPY ONLY. I keep separate waitlists for individuals and couples. Current wait (Aug 2024): at least 18 months for individuals, much sooner for couples. See website for more details.
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For many of us that carry memories of disconnection in childhood, the feeling of genuine connection seems elusive or even impossible. We yearn for it and defend against it. In session, we get a chance to get to know these conflicting parts of Self. We get an opportunity, in our own shifting therapeutic relationship, to focus on the present moment, trusting that the ways we organize this moment will lead us back to formative moments and to core beliefs.
We cannot change the past. We can change the beliefs that formed during times of trauma. Memories need not carry their emotional charge if we can feel and sense them from a safe place, from a place of connection. We focus on the body, because this is where the experience of life happens.
For many, when we felt disconnected from others, we also disconnected from ourselves. We internalized the disconnection. When we change the experience of the body, when we feel (sometimes for the first time) a real sense of safety at a physical level, our entire nervous system changes. We start making connections at an internal level. Our perception of the world changes. And many come to an awareness that external connections echo the internal: the more we integrate inside, the more connections we find-create-allow out in the world.
More Info About My Practice
Whatever your level of comfort, we move at your pace. You will not be judged for doing or not doing anything. Each person is unique, bringing with them their own sensitivities, sensations, expectations, judgments, triggers, strategies, and memories. We take what you bring, explore your organization of experience, find points of internal conflict, and move toward transformation and integration.
I utilize a mindful-holistic approach to "make visible" the patterns in your life and body. As this is awareness-based therapy, changes you may expect include a better sense of control and freedom in life and relationships, greater self-acceptance, and the reintegration of facets of self that have shut down in reaction to negative experience. This technique often helps to regulate the nervous system, lowering both depression and anxiety while eliminating personal identification with wounding and pain. Employing this method, you and I work together to realize your sense of purpose and identity. In examining your individual organization of experience, we often find chances to build corrective experience, openly influencing the core strategies, beliefs, meanings that compete with each other to run your life.
For couples...
We have an opportunity to gradually increase intimacy while practicing presence for one another's internal experience, focusing less on the topics of conflict and more on the process. We develop tools and language to begin navigating one another's legitimate attachment needs with kindness and respect. In-session experiments give us insights into one another's motives and capacities, eventually leading to understanding that so much of these reactions are physiological automations, not personal at all.
As we learn to hold space for emotion, experiential learning allows us to begin associating one another with softness (versus the somatic bracing that drives and polarizes many couples).
Specific Issue(s) I'm Skilled at Helping With
I specialize in Complex Trauma in its MANY varied forms, which includes insecure attachment. It may present as PTSD or dissociation. It is often felt as anxiety (general or social), shame (self-loathing, self-judgment,'broken'), or stuckness (learned helplessness, fatalism, self-oppression). It can even present in less obvious ways like an inability to appreciate the moment, numbness, sleep problems, aches and pains, IBS, ADHD, lack of purpose, perpetual ambivalence, mood swings, relational confusion, hyper- or hypo-sexuality, weight changes, and a range of other diagnoses or symptoms. In couples, trauma most often shows up in polarized attachment, playing out in fruitless looping conflicts that rarely (if ever) resolve. If you have never heard about Complex Trauma or just want to learn more, visit my website - lifekeycounsel.com - and click on 'Complex Trauma'.
Clinicians who offer sliding scale payment structures may offer lower or reduced fees based on an individual's ability to pay. Please contact this clinician for more details regarding their fees or sliding scale policy.