Approach to Therapy
I am passionate about my work. I love what I do and therefore am continually engaged in learning new skills and gaining new information, through training and research.
Research has shown that the most important factor in the effectiveness of therapy is the quality of the relationship between client and therapist.
I work very intuitively and connect in a deep way with my clients. I listen extremely well and find that I am good at getting to the heart of an issue. Once that happens, healing can begin!
I also believe in “walking my talk” and work to stay personally healthy. My own life experiences and healing help me understand what others are experiencing and may need. I remain on my own healing path so that I continue to grow and evolve.
My office is quiet and confidential. You won’t therefore find yourself sitting in a waiting room among other waiting clients.
My hours include evenings, to allow for your work schedule.
My Philosophy of Healing
“You cannot teach a man anything. You can only help him find it within himself.” – Galileo
I believe each of us has within us the source of wisdom for our own healing and growth. I see my role of therapist as one of guide and collaborator. As guide, I help each client uncover his or her own healing wisdom.
“It is through relationships that we heal.”
While it is true that each of us has within us the source of our own healing, it is also true that we were wounded in relationship, and so it is in a corrective relationship experience that we heal. We are also social beings and the process of change therefore takes place best in and through relationships. Alone, we all tend to get stuck in our own perceptions and unhealthy patterns. The relationship I have with each of my clients provides the challenge as well as the nurturing each needs for the change process to work.
“No healing can occur without compassion.” – Deepak Chopra
I am a holistic practitioner. That means that I pay attention to and work with my client as a “whole”, not to one aspect or to a symptom. I work with the mind as well as the body and the emotions to create the most complete healing possible. Our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual selves are not separate entities, but instead affect each other.
I believe health is often a matter of balance: work to play, giving to receiving, mind to body, thoughts to feelings, the spiritual to the mundane.
Healing can strengthen and be fostered by a sense of spirituality – a feeling of connection to something greater than oneself. When clients choose to do so, I work with them to strengthen their spirituality as they come to experience and define that.
I pay attention to some key things in each client’s life:
We learn to be people and have relationships in our original families – when we are vulnerable and have no other source of information. I pay attention to what may be unhealed from that time – because what is unhealed has a way of influencing our behavior, thoughts, and feelings -often outside of our awareness, and in ways that are damaging to us and those around us.
“In the struggle to control emotions, they become even more painful.” – Ron Kurtz
“Feelings have to be encountered and felt in all their force. There is no other way through to the other side of them; there’ll be no resolution, no peace.” – John Kabat Zinn
I pay close attention to emotion when working with clients. Our culture teaches us to ignore and repress feelings, especially painful ones. Emotion is there to tell us important information about ourselves and the world around us. Emotions can help guide us when read well. I help clients identify their feelings, learn to stay with a feeling until complete, and then let it go.