My Approach to Helping
Are you feeling uncomfortable with yourself? Overwhelmed, uncertain, or afraid? Depressed, stuck, or "turned upside down"? Or is your family feeling chaotic, constantly fighting the same argument again and again?
If so, maybe you have encountered something that made you "rethink" yourself or your place in the world. These events may be things you chose or they may have come as a surprise. Whatever has happened, I can offer you focused, diversity-friendly psychotherapy to help you find yourself again. Then, you can decide who you want to become after these changes.
Exploring your story is important to our work together, and I invite you to use both words and actions, including breathwork, somatic work, art, or play, to help you align spirit, brain, and body. This alignment allows you to find out and deal with whatever has been holding you back. Then, you can act freely.
More Info About My Practice
I work with Teens and Individual Adults of any culture, ethnicity, size, race, religious group, orientation, or gender identity. My goal as a therapist is to help you feel comfortable in your own skin.
How Psychotherapy Can Help
Feeling like you can work with your therapist is a huge part of good psychotherapy. When it's working well, therapy provides a safe place where you can bring all of your feelings, thoughts, and experiences---perhaps by talking, or by or using play, art, or the sandtray to communicate without words. Often you find out things about yourself that you didn't know before.
Working together, we can get acquainted with all the parts of you. I can empathize with your struggles, successes, or confusion, and I can teach you skills that help you resolve stress or conflicts---within yourself or with others. As you understand all the aspects of yourself more clearly, and work out your internal conflicts, you are likely to become more able to decide consciously how to act. Your relationship with yourself improves. At the same time, as you express yourself more clearly and use new skills with others, all of your relationships can improve. When you know you who are and where you're going, you can get there!
On the Fence About Going to Therapy?
No one can handle everything alone all the time. Sometimes you need expert help! You'd go to the doctor if your arm was broken, or call a plumber if your drain was clogged and you couldn't unclog it yourself. Seeing a psychotherapist is no different.
A psychotherapist is like a plumber for emotional pain. Something is causing you distress. Maybe you feel stuck and blocked up. Or you find yourself trying the same things over and over, without success. Maybe you've tried to get some help from family or friends, too, but it wasn't enough. Regardless of all the various things you've tried, it's not solved yet. Or maybe you feel scared and overwhelmed, with no idea where to start. These are the times when you need to seek help from someone who's got some special training and experience that's relevant to your troubles: a psychotherapist.
When you or your family first come to see me, I'll ask a lot of questions about you, like "What have you already tried?" and "What are you good at?" and "What caused you to call me?" We will troubleshoot your difficulties together, and then we can build on what you already know, and work together to help you build new skills, so that you will have new ways to address your troubles.
My focus is helping people and families discover yourselves so that you can align with your values and make conscious choices about your lives. (I call this Aligned Conscious Thinking, or ACT.) Give me a call to see whether I can help you unblock things and get re-aligned!
Importance of the Client-Therapist Alliance
Of course you want to make sure your therapist is skilled and has experience helping people with whatever isn't working for you. But there's one factor that's just as important as those things, and that's how well we work together. For therapy to work well, you'll be sharing a lot of information about yourself or your family with your therapist. And you'll need to experiment with some different ways of doing things. (If the old ways were working, would you need therapy?) These things can feel challenging. So the single most important thing is for you to believe you can work with the therapist you choose. Therapists call this "fit".
I offer a free telephone consultation with prospective clients because fit is so important. I want us both to have a chance to check it out before you invest in an appointment. So give me a call today at 408-390-3680 to set up your free consultation.
