Individual Psychotherapy

I embody an active stance in my work with clients.  This means that I express curiosity with questions, ideas, and interpretations. I share techniques, theories, and tools in order to collaboratively find what is helpful to you. I am here to give you food for thought, to tell you what I see, and to help you learn how to understand and articulate your experience. I am here to help you find a way through the challenges you present, to help you understand them completely, and to help you make sense of and tackle the seemingly impossible. In getting to know you, I will get to know how to support your growth. As appropriate, I will utilize practical concepts of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, trauma informed concepts of Internal Family Systems techniques, harm reduction and attachment theory, somatic techniques, and other useful and evidence-based concepts and theories.

It is ok if you don’t identify with experiencing feelings.  Sometimes people feel like therapy won’t be able to help because they don’t know what they feel or simply don’t feel anything. I can work with you to figure out the correct language for our collaborative inquiry of your motivations, behaviors, and inner workings.

We can also work to articulate feelings that seem impossible to know or touch. I will help you to find safety within yourself and to increase your tolerance for the emotional landscape. 

Sometimes it seems like the emotions are too much, or getting in the way, or throwing us off the trail of where we are trying to go. I teach emotional regulation from an experiential place. We will practice emotional regulation, and learn that it is not about limiting the emotions, but about being present with and respecting our emotional experience. This also involves recognizing the role of our beliefs about emotions, what we are supposed to do with them, and how.

Therapy can be a joyful place for laughter and self-discovery. I think of it as a form of “serious play”, where I bring commitment, curiosity, spontaneity, and surprise. Each session will help. We are in this together.