*A note about this page: If you read to the end of this page and feel a joyful sense of “YES!” we may be a great match for each other. And, not to worry, the verbosity of this page/website does not translate into the therapy room. I want to give prospective clients enough ‘about me’ to feel resonate or not.

philosophy

My philosophy about therapeutic change is that our job is not to seek and destroy problems or ‘bad’ behaviors, but rather seek, understand, and integrate the barriers we have built (and inherited) between ourselves and love. We cannot have too much self-love but we can certainly suffer from too little. Many of us have been taught that self-love is selfish. I fervently disagree.

Self-love cultivates SELF-FULL-NESS — a healthy balance of self and other regard, care, and compassion. Selfishness and selflessness are two manifestations of insufficient self-love. Selfishness is rooted in a belief of external scarcity, believing there is not enough for everyone and therefore, one must consume as much as possible for survival. Selflessness is rooted in a belief of internal scarcity, believing that others determine our enoughness.

My therapy process supports clients in striking the balance and creating fluid stability in self-full-ness. Removing barriers to your experiences of love, not just with others, but much more essentially, within yourself — I believe is the north star of psychotherapy.

My approach to therapy is intuitive, curious, sincere, and compassionate. My style is adaptable, process-oriented, and organic. My primary goal is to support you in unfolding to your joy, ease, and embodied-presence. Rather than hunting down ‘the problem’ and making it ‘go away,’ our work will encourage your self-insight, wisdom, and self-trust allowing you to recognize patterns, needs, and no’s that have been suppressed and/or dismissed resulting in suffering. 

In my work, I often speak of digestion and compost, sometimes interchangeably (yes, we will giggle about poop!). Digestion and the composting process are two phenomenal metaphors for how we can get stuck in our psychological and emotional suffering. If we want to thrive, we need to properly process food, experiences, and emotions, extracting the nutrients (lessons/wisdom) and eliminating what no longer serves us. When we engage in a compost approach to living life, we are striving not to send anything to the landfill, because we understand that there is no such thing as ‘away.’ The benefits of a compost-minded approach to life are vast because nothing is wasted and we become liberated from the baggage of unprocessed pain and suffering.

Out of sight, out of mind (the purpose of the landfill) can absolutely give us temporary relief and serve to settle acute suffering. We need respite from our suffering! The trouble is, many of us are relying on a temporary and short-lasting ‘fix,’ intended to treat an acute issue, to solve a persistent and historic pain (chronic). This is, after all, how western society models ‘medicine’ to us. Hope as we do, it doesn’t foster healing. 

I believe the collective ‘we’ is desperately trying to string together enough moments of respite to create some sort of feeling of deep rest, often without success. We’ve become loyal customers to fads and fixes and ‘bad’ habits and addictions, and while there may be momentary relief, this is unsustainable for a multitude of reasons — none of which deserve the self-punishment of shame. In this respectable process of striving for intermittent rest tucked in between all the tasks on our ‘to do’ list, we’re losing even more energy. This is a vicious and exhausting cycle.

With me, therapy sessions will become a refuge for you. Therapy won’t be a thing you do, instead it will be a restorative container we create together. In your own time, I will support you in unpacking, digesting, and integrating the ‘baggage’ you’ve been carrying for so long (personal, relational, ancestral, and societal). You can think of me as a digestive enzyme for your emotions and psychology, encouraging your inherent wise and expansive self in remembering how to balance and regenerate. Once we process/digest, we can use the compost we create to plant new seeds of our conscious choosing.