How do I get the most out of therapy?

To get the most out of therapy it’s crucial to have a therapist that you trust.
You’ve got to have a sense that they’re going to be able to handle whatever challenges you bring to your sessions.

A therapist is a guide who points out the way for you. You have to walk your own path, but they can shine a light on the path and point out where there may be pitfalls and cul-de-sacs.

It is very useful to have a sense of what you’d like to do in any given session. The therapist should be tracking your global progress, but if you let them know specific things you want to address on a given day, it can focus the work and gives you more ownership of it.

Keeping a journal of the highlights of your sessions can be very helpful. Use it throughout the week to add insights that come up, dreams that seem significant, and even drawings of images that may come to you. All of this supports you in being more aware of what’s happening in the unconscious and integrating the work you’re doing in therapy.

What does one do in therapy with you?

After getting a brief overview of your life situation and what you want to work on, we start looking at the places where you get stuck. Usually these stuck places are echoes of woundings or trauma received when you were younger. When untreated, trauma usually turns into limiting beliefs about who you are and what you get to have in life-how much health and joy you get to experience. It also can result in continually repeating behavioral patterns that don’t get you the results you are looking for.

I support you in bringing gentle awareness to the hurt places in your psyche.  This awareness has a tremendously healing capacity and can help to upgrade the limiting beliefs mentioned above.  It can also support the calling-in of organic qualities of intelligence, playfulness and joy, that were stuck behind the trauma and the mechanisms that were put in place to protect you from it. As our work progresses, you can continually upgrade your relationship with yourself and others and start to be able to consciously create the life that you want to have for yourself!

Do you do phone sessions?

Yes I do. It you are out of the area or if you live in Portland but it is difficult for you to get to my office, we can arrange to set up sessions by phone or by Zoom.