What are you like as a therapist?

I have a large capacity for grief, for terror, for the kind of pain that's hard to say out loud. The deep betrayals in our closest relationships. The helplessness of watching someone we love hurt themselves. The excruciating moments of recognizing that we've been used and deceived someone we trusted, someone we believed loved us. The gripping terror of looking in the mirror and wondering "Am I like them?" I can sit with all of it; I've had to face those things honestly in my own life, too.

I work hard in my own internal system not to sugarcoat, not to ignore, not to deflect, not to omit any truth. Because of that, I've developed the capacity to stay with all of it without running away or dismissing - which means I can turn around and do that for my clients, too. I can hold really big space for what they're experiencing, however excruciating, however nuanced.

I live by a commitment for myself that none of it — none of the pain, the grief, the damage — will take me out or dim my spirit. So I can turn around and hold the full reality of what my clients are carrying and still hold a solid, grounded connection to the light in them, too. 

That said — I'm not the therapist for you if you're looking for someone to just listen to your week. I care too much about your actual growth to do that. I will notice and reflect when you're stuck - even when you’re very committed to those stuck cycles :) I will name it, clearly and kindly.

In short, I'm warm and playful and understanding...but never at the expense of leaving you stuck in cycles that are hurting you. 

What kind of client thrives with you? Who is your person — who do you do your best work with?

Clients often come to me describing feeling:

• Exhausted (“I’m so tired of this”)
• Fed up (“This is NOT what I wanted my life to be like!”)
• Frustrated (“Why can’t I get anything to change?”)
• Overwhelmed (“I’m so drained and depressed”)
• Spinning their wheels (“Why can’t I make sense of this?”)
• Looping anxious thoughts (“It’s getting hard to breathe…”)
• Lashing out at the people they love (“Why can’t I stop reacting!?”)
• Withdrawing from connection (“Relationships feel too risky”)
• Numbing apathy or depression (“Its better not to feel…”)
  
  

My clients have often tried therapy or other healing modalities and understand what happened and how they got here — the harm was real, the pain is real. But they're not willing to let it be the last word. They come to me because they're done waiting for circumstances, or other people, to change before they can feel okay. 

Not because they're in denial, not because they're minimizing what happened — but because they have a deep drive toward their own growth that won't quit. They want clarity. They want to build something solid on the inside that doesn't depend on what's happening on the outside. They want to act in alignment with who they actually are. And they're willing to do the internal work to get there.

I help clients move toward integration of the parts that are still confined by the old experiences by giving their system a safe place and a more resourced Self to be with that experience — so it can actually be felt, metabolized, moved through the body, and integrated. This naturally leads to an unfolding of more and more of the client’s clear and genuine Self experiencing and leading their life. 

I also really love working with clients who have some openness to spirituality. You don't have to be religious. But if there's some part of you that suspects healing involves more than just the individual person — that there's a larger web of connection, a spiritual dimension, something that holds us — I work well in that territory, and I take it seriously.

What modalities do you use, and why do you choose those?

I'm a huge fan of Internal Family Systems — that's my primary modality. What I love about it: it's research-supported, with lots of evidence for its efficacy, particularly for people who've experienced trauma and relational trauma. The model has an inherent reparation of relationship internally. It validates the experiences we've had and the different ways we've learned to protect ourselves — seeing those protections, validating them, understanding them — but helping them to shift and update their roles if they're no longer needed. That gives us more and more space to be self-directed out of compassion, curiosity, confidence, creativity, and connectedness.

Ultimately, I believe IFS is the model that most clearly and consistently gives the client choice — within the therapeutic space and within their own system. I have no desire to be the authority inside anybody else's mind or internal system. My goal is to guide my clients to be their own inner authority. That means going back to younger selves, to younger experiences, making reparations, healing old wounds, being willing to look at what's buried without flinching — and being there for the younger self in the way a loving adult should have been. So that every part of them can be integrated into the whole, rather than cut off or hidden or buried.

For clients who are open to it, I also love working with the spiritual aspects of their system — including accessing spiritual guides, loving family members, and ancestors - as well as the richness available in Jungian Shadow archetypes; compassionately bringing the unconscious into the conscious so it no longer sneakily runs our life. 

I also lean heavily toward somatic interventions. Listening to, trusting, and learning from the body. Understanding that the body communicates — and that even when our conscious mind will omit, forget, or ignore, our body never does. Our body stores and holds every memory and experience. I utilize somatic interventions including following physical sensations and building interoceptive awareness, in order to hear the body's wisdom and reintegrate body, mind, and soul.

All of the approaches I use are selected based on three primary criteria: one, efficacy — I'm only using modalities that work in the long term. Two, research support over time. And three, choice — the continuous returning of authority and wisdom back to the client's own body and system. Not building reliance on me to be the expert on anybody's system, but teaching clients to be the authority of themselves.