In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order. – Carl Gustav Jung
Starting therapy is a courageous step towards facing something that is asking for your attention inside. It’s a commitment to a practice of internal reflection, which sets in motion a growth and change that is trying to emerge. Having a meaningful and transformative therapy experience relies heavily on a good match between client and therapist. May the information here help you get a sense of whether I’m the right person for you to work with at this time.
Experiences I primarily work with:
- anxiety/fear/dread
- depression
- dream work
- relationship conflict and enmeshed relationships
- low self worth/esteem and lack of self-compassion
- perfectionism/highly critical
- life transitions
- childhood trauma, such as neglect and physical or sexual abuse
- re-membering, re-connecting to Self
What is your approach? What does therapy look and feel like?
I use an intuitive, relational, insight-oriented, and trauma informed approach pulling from twenty years of combined experience in social work, depth psychology, and the personal study of different wisdom and mystical traditions. I’m primarily trained in the analytical psychology of Carl G Jung as it provides a framework where all my experiences and study come together, and I find it to be a psychology that is wide and deep enough for the complexity of a human life.
Each therapy is completely different as it is tailored to each unique person. This is what I love about therapy – it honors the individual’s unique personality, wounds, strengths, and destiny. In general I will encourage you to share as openly and honestly as possible about yourself and your experiences, including your emotions, concerns, regrets, fantasies, fears, and dreams. Sharing night dreams can be an important and powerful aspect of therapy as it is an incredibly helpful bridge to the personal and collective unconscious, and cultivating a relationship to the unconscious is necessary for fulfilling the inherent and instinctual urge towards fullness and wholeness, or in other words, in becoming more of ourselves.
We will look to the past as growing up, parts of ourselves are encouraged or approved of, and often become dominant, while other parts are rejected, undervalued, or undeveloped and left in the shadows. These less integrated parts of ourselves often hold important information, gifts, and talents that we need in order to feel more alive and comfortable in our skin. I will also ask about known ancestral pasts to get a sense of the ancestral burdens, gifts and blessings you might be carrying. We will also listen and look for the archetypal patterns that are close to you and have been part of your own life story thus far, and we will listen to Psyche for what is trying to emerge for the future. Psyche in Greek is soul, and so a major part of the therapeutic task is listening to your soul and discovering or remembering the wounds and gifts it holds and how it longs to be known, experienced, or shared in this life.
In addition to my training and background I will bring intuition, warmth, humor, humility, and deep dedication to our work. Although therapy can feel challenging and scary at times as we face difficult feelings or experiences together, it is also filled with discovery, awe, joy, and beauty.