My Approach
My therapeutic practice is done through the lens of Somatic Psychotherapy, and is a blend of many somatically informed models of change. See below for some of the models that I employ.
Most importantly, I want to know what you are looking to grow, change or need addressed in your life so that you can feel your best, or at the very least, better than before you walked in the office. Therapy is not exactly always easy – it is a learning process, and learning, by nature, is something that challenges us to stretch and strengthen connections. I think it can be done in a way that works uniquely to the client, where you can feel involved and in charge of what it is that you are signing up for.
My approach is warm, direct, respectfully challenging, relational and multi-layered. Meaning, at times we are laughing, other times forming understanding, many times learning how to utilize your body as an instrument instead of as an unknown vessel. I am passionate about learning together and finding ways to support my clients in ways that are unique to them.
Somatic Psychotherapy is a whole is a model of psychotherapy that works from the “bottom-up” instead of “top-down” in how it addresses the symptoms, behaviors, thoughts, or problems that a client is needing support around.
I find it to be a very powerful method if you are ready to engage and influence what has been, are stuck in patterns, or are feeling in ways that you can’t quite access but you know are in the way of feeling or acting in your best interest.
Our bodies are complex systems of drives and organizations, and Somatic Psychotherapy seeks to befriend the various signals we get and learn from them – learning what and how to listen, and also the discernment of what may be something to negotiate with or hold with a more expanded sense of self. This is important in healing trauma, relational attachment wounds, and re-creating self stories that are meant to protect, but tend to disconnect us from what we truly want.
To know more about Somatic Psychotherapy, click here.
Below is a list of modalities and communities that I have learned and grown my therapy practice within:
Accelerated, Experiential, Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP)– a relational model that helps clients identify vital processes of connection, balance, and strengths in relationship to themselves and others. You can read more about this method in the article, “The Importance of the Therapeutic Relationship“.
Formative Psychology – a method of engagement with how the body is organizing itself in response to its environment, as a way to gain greater influence of how we can consciously respond – instead of merely react, to our life and our relationships. If you are open to it, I guide you through a 5 step process of somatic engagement that can build awareness and self-influence within patterns that you want to change.
Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR) – A trauma resolution model that utilizes bilateral stimulation to access the limbic system of your brain, where your emotional memory is stored. If you are experiencing any kind of PTSD, have patterns that you seem to not be able to break, or have relational stress that needs some new resources, EMDR offers a safe frame to hold and reprocess in a non-traumatizing way new information so that your body can learn to state shift in places where you have been stuck or caught in patterns that do not serve you.
My work is rooted in a deep faith that, with bodily awareness, our lives become vitally important and our relationships rich with freedom and possibility. I have found that it is in relationship with someone who can help us see and sense ourselves, that we can grow a sense of strength that is then a source of navigation throughout the rest of our lives. This strength is anchored as a felt sense, something to return to – a practice of presence and engagement so that perhaps what is difficult can be softened into; what was once experienced as too much, was all the while, worth discovering.
