Depth-oriented therapy · Kansas City · Overland Park
My name is Erik and for over a decade I’ve specialized in Trauma, attachment, the body and creative approaches to people’s personal growth. I provide Children’s, couples and individual depth-oriented therapy.
There is a good deal of info on this site, you do not need to read, take in or understand it. Give me a call and we can more quickly find what brought you here and if I can be of help or support.
Work with me → About meHi, my name is Erik.
"The least of things with meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it."— Carl Jung
Relationship
Regardless of whether you have seen a therapist before, therapy with me will be different. I am not an armchair therapist. When you see me you will be seeing a relationally friendly, straight forward person whose primary interest is to get to know you and what supports you. I've got over ten years experience with others and I study very hard and wide so that I can offer as much resources both educationally and within myself for what you need to be in the life you believe in and want.
Clients give me consistent feedback that I “get them” (regardless of gender, culture, or religion). They often say they feel I am on their side — and yet cannot believe how transparent and educational I am about their issues, therapy, what I don’t know, and where my expertise ends.
You will hear this sentiment many times on this website: if the problem was solvable by simple “how-to” advice, you likely would have solved it already. And if it’s just knowing more techniques — you can get that on YouTube. What I offer is a trained therapeutic relationship in which you will know work is being done by the quality of improvements you can make within the therapy itself. We are all out here growing, and it is my work to help and support growth.
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A comment on trauma
Trauma
A Comment on Trauma
I would like to take a moment and address those of you who might have come here because of “trauma”. And I do not mean the general trauma that is the subject of all therapy. I am referring to somatic/body and psychic trauma coming from overwhelming, shattering, or neglectful experience in childhood or adulthood. The body and psyche can be left in a state that is no longer congruent functioning. A car accident, the death of someone close, prolonged or severe neglect—any event that breaks the continuity of self (often noticed by difficulties sleeping, triggering memories etc). Some people say there is small t trauma and big T trauma. In that sense, I work with big T trauma.
Unprocessed trauma usually has a way of living our lives for us. It can quietly organize our life from the background. People who carry this kind of trauma usually know it but may not realize how specific trauma and its symptoms show up. Trauma triggers tend to show up in two forms: black and white thinking that aid avoidance of stress, or; in quick aggressive or sad emotional states that feel, "out of control". In many cases a person experiences both. Trauma can cause unknown avoidance or repeatedly entering the same relationships and situations despite our want prevent this return.
Now while trauma can be severe it is in trauma that we can recover important pieces of our strength and wholeness that provide new and deeper forms of self recovery. In this way trauma can present a gift from the painful dark - those choosing to work with their trauma can not only move towards regulation and safety they can also recover more than was lost prior to the trauma.
A client and I once found an image: trauma is a vase that has cracked, sometimes in many pieces, or sometimes one deep crack. Therapy is the careful mending of those cracks. When the work is thorough, the vase from the outside looks whole again, it feels whole again - because it is. And yet, the gifts of mending oneself and repairing ones own wounds extends far beyond one injury - it extends to all injuries.
I cannot do the mending for you, but I know this terrain well enough to sit with you while we sort through the pieces, collect the materials and begin mending what ails you.