Therapy for Individuals,
Couples & Families
Whether you come to therapy on your own or with a partner, you want to leave therapy feeling energized and secure – both within yourself and in your relationships
In our first session:
In addition to touching on all the general areas of your life, we will do an exercise to identify the root causes of your emotional reactions
If you have come with a relationship concern, we will map out the cycle of disconnection between you and your partner (or child, friend, colleague, etc).
Where helpful, we will add baseline assessments for any anxiety, depression, anger or interpersonal problems you are having
We will begin to clarify your vision for your life
Future sessions will then be spent:
Working through root causes (such that you are no longer activated to the same level of intensity in your current life)
De-escalating cycles of conflict and withdrawal/avoidance in your relationship
Building skills where needed
Creating and enhancing the positive cycles that enable you to move forward with greater clarity, confidence, ease, and compassion for self and other
How Counseling Helps
With reduced reactivity, restored connection(s), and enhanced skills, clients are able to get to know themselves (and their partners) during the session in positive new ways they haven’t been able to before. This new learning through experience (not just cognitive understanding) then carries forward in their lives
Longer sessions give us the time we need… for deep listening, healing the impact of past events in a focused way, and bringing your hard-earned wisdom into your current life.
Are you interested in Individual or Couples & Family Therapy?
Therapy for Individuals
We will assess for root causes, including trauma and environmental stressors, in our first session.
Trauma is any event that overwhelms the nervous system at the time. These events can be the kind that:
make the news (e.g. wars, fires, floods, or car accidents)
happen within close relationships (e.g. verbal, physical, or sexual abuse; divorce, witnessing domestic violence, or being made the scapegoat of the family)
occur at key times of development (e.g. being bullied in childhood; not knowing the answer to a teacher’s question; or experiencing a stressful event during pregnancy or childbirth when hormone levels are high)
occur at key times in relationship (e.g. when you or your child is sick, or you’ve lost a loved one, and your partner’s not there for you).
Sometimes the trauma is what didn’t happen, as is the case with emotional or physical neglect.
The story itself may seem small, or it may seem big. What matters is how the trauma lives in memory and the body, and how it impacts the way we perceive our world – as if the past is still here with us. If current life moments either consciously or unconsciously “touch” old memories, the reaction can be disproportionate to the moment.
Many stressful and traumatic events heal on their own. Some get “stuck”, and over time morph into PTSD, depression, anxiety, anger issues, low self-esteem, reactivity in relationships, obsessive thinking, feelings of powerlessness, etc. Over time, we might forget the event even happened or think it no longer impacts us.
Using proven trauma therapies, including EMDR, we will do an assessment to identify how much of your trauma remains, then engage your own internal healing processes in an integrated way that clears the blocks and naturally restores balance and health. From there, new skills, connections, and ways of thinking can be adopted with greater ease.
Therapy for Couples & Families
When a relationship is in distress, very often a difficult negative cycle of conflict and withdrawal is repeating, regardless of the topic.
Sadly, the more each partner tries to reconnect or fix the problem, the worse the cycle can become. Intense feelings of anger, sadness, anxiety, and fear can escalate and fuel behaviors such as blame, criticism, stonewalling, passive-aggression, affairs, etc., causing deep emotional pain. Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) for couples, developed by Dr. Sue Johnson, is a well-researched and effective form of therapy that focuses on strengthening and repairing the relational bonds between partners.
The first stage of EFT involves de-escalating the conflict. As your therapist, I will work to help you understand your cycle as a couple and see more clearly how each of you is coping with the distress (and underlying vulnerability) you are feeling in the relationship. Very often it’s hard to believe (or to allow yourself to care) that your partner is actually feeling hurt and missing the connection with you if all you see is lashing out or turning away.
EFT slows things down, creates safety, and allows for access to the softer underlying feelings that were hidden beneath the coping.
Here, partners can experience and respond to each other in ways that create new positive patterns of sharing, responsiveness, closeness, and intimacy.
Since at least some part of the pattern of emotional reactivity has often begun for individuals long before they meet as partners, there can be great benefit to healing the reactivity from these earlier root causes (i.e. traumatic or stressful events) within the couples session. Doing so builds compassion and understanding; allows partners to support each other in new ways; and lets us move directly back into the primary reason you have come for therapy: to heal and improve your relationship.
Important Note:
Especially with regard to working through past trauma, I want to be careful not to imply that the stress, anxiety, or depression you are experiencing now is based solely on what is happening inside of you due to something in the past. Of course, current life stressors matter, and we are all impacted by events unfolding in the news – and in our own communities. The work my colleagues and I do, helping to heal trauma and restore relationships, makes one better able to respond to all of our present moments and possibilities.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Our therapy sessions can help alleviate anxiety, anger, depression, trauma, grief, loss, intrusive thoughts, painful memories, numbing out, guilt, low self-worth, family problems, and relationship concerns. Once strong emotional reactions have been reduced, skills enhanced or developed, and any relational bonds restored, I’ll support you in developing any new skills needed for your unique situation.
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I have good outcomes and enjoy working with:
individual clients who are teenage years or older
couples at any stage of relationship (dating, married, divorced, separated, reconciling)
families
clients of all cultural, ethnic, sexual, and spiritual backgrounds and orientations
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Longer sessions offer many benefits… more deep listening, more focused guidance. Time to get through the rough stuff and experience the clearing that awaits on the other side. The frequency of sessions varies (usually meeting every 1-4 weeks), and we schedule according to your needs. Occasionally, a client will request multiple sessions in a day or week, which can be very effective as well. I can usually schedule those within 3-4 weeks from the time you call.
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There are so many ways to learn, heal, and grow… as individuals, couples, families, and in all the communities and environments to which we belong. So this is a really good question to ask. Often, there is simply a “sense of fit”. More specifically, I could be a good fit if you have very strong reactions (over-, under- or misplaced reactions) that are confusing to you, or that you’d rather not have; if you know you have some stressful events or traumas you would like to work through; if the same kinds of difficult patterns repeat and you want to transform them; if you like the blend of focus on identifying and healing individual root causes and negative relationship cycles, while enhancing and building skills; or if you have a sense that there is just something more to your life and/or relationship(s) that you want to explore.
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I have good outcomes and enjoy helping clients with “anger issues”. Anger as an emotion (whether expressed aggressively, assertively, or passive-aggressively) is often vilified, when in fact it is an emotion pointing to something that’s important and in need of attention. Let’s find out what that is.
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Yes. If any part of a system changes then by definition the system overall must change. Any movement toward health moves the system (i.e. couple, family, friendship) toward health. We also can’t know when, how, or how much your partner or family members will respond. Both relationships and change are dynamic processes. Each step reveals the next on the path.
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Yes, it’s very difficult emotional work, AND we’ll be using your innate gifts and the feelings from the best moments in your life as “medicine” to help you through. Humor and joy are present in our sessions, often unexpectedly (or at unexpected moments) and this just naturally brings a lightness that seems to balance the painful moments.
Please see my ‘Services/Therapy’ page for more information on trauma and stressful events. Many people only consider harrowing events like war or natural disasters as “traumatic”, when in fact, any stressful event that overwhelms the system at the time registers in the brain as trauma by creating the same inner cascade of physiological events that the thinking part of the brain then tries to make sense of. The thinking then creates additional feelings that impact physiology, we become habituated to that new physiology (the particular chemical responses in the brain and body), and loops begin to form between thinking, feeling, and the body. Additionally, there are factors that increase the stress response in the moment of the event and those that decrease it.I have no expectation that any particular event is or is not still impacting you. There are exercises we will do to find out. Many clients who have done a lot of talk therapy have great understanding and insight around their problems, yet when we find there is still some “charge” (either emotionally or somatically) that remains and explains the lingering pain or difficulties.
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Yes. Foundations are so important. We become conditioned to particular ideas and assumptions about relationships, based on our culture, our families of origin, and our past experiences, etc. Pre-marital counseling helps you bring awareness to your assumptions so you can be intentional about the kind of relationship you’re hoping to create.
Identifying and transforming any negative cycles; creating secure connection where you respond to each other in ways that are soothing and bonding; learning how to fully repair the inevitable hurts that arise; and becoming clear and intentional about the life you are creating together – these become building blocks for your future.
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Since I work in longer sessions, and insurance coverage is based on the traditional therapy “hour”, which is typically 45 minutes of direct contact with the client (unless the clinician extends his/her time), I am an out-of-network provider for all plans.
If you have an out-of-network plan, many insurance companies will reimburse you for part of the session fee. Please call your insurance company to find out whether your individual or couples/family session is eligible for reimbursement. If you have an out-of-network plan and you would like to submit to your insurance company for reimbursement, I will provide you with the paperwork you’ll need to submit, and they will reimburse you directly. For payment, I accept checks and almost any form of credit, debit, or health savings account card. -
I am currently holding all sessions online through a secure HIPAA-compliant client portal. Please feel free to ask any questions or share any concerns you have about telehealth.
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I begin by meeting with the parent or parents, to get an understanding of the dynamics and make sure we are all pulling in the same direction. Sometimes during this session a particular sensitivity regarding the child will surface. For instance, a sense of guilt or regret; or a strong fear, expectation, or frustration. If this is the case, there is an exercise I can lead you through to help identify then work through the root causes of those strong feelings and reactions, such that those buttons can’t be pushed so easily the next time. I will then turn my attention to the child(ren) to work through any underlying root causes. You will all then return to session as a family. In these family sessions old hurts and vulnerabilities are free to surface and be responded to in new ways that provide healing and a stronger foundation for the future.
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Yes! The above holds true for families with children of all ages.
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I see many parents of adult children, who initially despair that their son or daughter is becoming estranged and won’t agree to counseling; yet down the road, when the adult child senses the shift in the parent, very often either a healing and reconnection naturally occurs, or the adult child then agrees to counseling sessions where the relationship can be repaired.
