Individuals
Through the safety and skills you and I will build in relationship, we will venture into how you relate to the people, forces, and emotions in your life. This will allow you to explore and learn, developing into a person who is able to adapt, grow, and weather the challenges that your personal journey presents. Alongside you, I commit to building a space that can be durable enough to hold against the most violent storms of anxiety, depression and loss, yet, remain tender enough to hold the realities of a wounded heart, a confused mind and a tender voice. I believe education and understanding are important keys to navigating yourself and those with whom you are in relationship. A genuine understanding of your life through narratives, themes, diagrams and pictures can be the key to staying on track and owning your transformation.
Couples
The development of your family, culture and religion of origin is my primary interest when working with couples. My approach brings insights necessary to understand and create a map of the boundaries and connections between you and your partner. The hidden benefit of committed relationships is the opportunity to use a safe relationship to heal and mend the parts of ourselves hurt in past relationships. Couples therapy with me is about learning how best to communicate, listen and understand your partner so that each of you can live not independently, or co-dependently, but in a way that that supports your professions, passions, values and selves.
Families
Family Therapy is an approach where your entire family comes into sessions together. By sitting with your family, I will help you move into deeper understandings of yourselves and the roles you play in your family. By having everyone in the room, broken patterns can be mended in the moment so that healing is created for the family as a whole. This approach helps parents maintain their roles as parents while helping children develop independence and maturity. Whether the goal of your sessions is to salvage a family that has suffered damage or to navigate a new transition in uncharted waters Family Therapy can bring the necessary support to continue on your family voyage together. When communication and understanding are cultivated, any family can work through disagreements and conflict.
Sand tray Therapy
Sand tray for Adults
Sand tray therapy is about finding the self through symbols and story. It invites your internal landscape to develop a voice from which to find and strengthen your development. Sand tray therapy uncovers a person’s internal mapping, allowing you to create new paths as well as take many of the paths you have not had a chance to take. In sand tray therapy you are offered the chance to safely create and experience your own internal world through many worlds perhaps unavailable to you in your current situation. In short, sand tray therapy provides the chance to find the resources you need from within yourself so that you can start to make change more deeply from within.
Sand tray for Children
I work with children from 3-13 years of age using both sand tray and play therapy techniques. I work with a range of childhood issues such as divorce, moving or a new baby in the home in addition to internal issues of anxiety, identity and trauma. Working with children is about energy. When a child experiences trauma, their energy gets stuck. When a child misses a developmental step or has a developmental delay in some area, their energy can either be undeveloped and small or can become large in an attempt to resolve their issues of relationship disconnection. Even when a child is said to have “bad behavior,” we mean that their energy is being used in an undesirable way. My work is to help children use and know their energy and their self so that their creativity, resilience and bold spirits can be supported and used for their success.
Parent Support While Your Child is Being Seen
I consistently update my training in trauma and communication. Emphasizing these areas allows me to strengthen these especially important aspects of therapy. The special emphasis I place on trauma helps me find and create the missing bridges that a parent is not trained to build or expected to know. Further, I place high value on supporting an understanding of your child’s behavior and how to best use and understand the natural communication style available to both parent and child. A child’s individual character and behavior cannot always be understood through broad developmental models; they can always be understood in their world of play and in your parenting. It is especially emphasized in my work that the the parent is safe from the tension of difficulties being seen as the parent or child’s “fault”. In my work, the relationship is my emphasis, making sure both parent and child are strengthened and that fault is understood in its true light – as confusion on how to relate and attach.
