Approach

What Do Sessions With Me Look Like? 

I bring deep presence and attunement, compassion and care when I listen. My orienting framework is Internal Family Systems, which is about healing your relationship with the different parts of you (ie, the part that wants to veg out versus the part that wants to be productive and get shit done) so that there is more harmony and less conflict inside. So instead of me interpreting what you share or giving advice outright, I’m more interested in supporting you in relating to yourself and your parts with more awareness, compassion, curiosity, patience, and care. That may sound like, “What comes up for you as you say that?”, “Can we pause here and hang out with this for a moment and see what you notice inside?”, as a way to bring more awareness to all parts of you. As a result, over time with this way of being with yourself, you may learn to be more connected with your different and sometimes conflicting thoughts and feelings, needs and wants, with more peace, calm, and confidence. You may find yourself more led by your inner wisdom, rather than feeling overwhelmed by any particular worry or feeling. 

Connecting with the Body: Somatic Experiencing

I am a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner and use this approach together with Internal Family Systems. Somatic Experiencing is a body based trauma healing modality that explores how beliefs and past experiences, including trauma, can get stuck in the body. This approach uses here and now awareness of breath, emotion, posture and other body language to help release bound up trauma energy so that something new can occur, based on choice and awareness. Somatic Experiencing offers tools to regulate emotions, anxiety, and stress using the innate wisdom and resilience of the body, and human spirit. It differs from talk therapy in many ways, primarily in that the focus is on the body’s language and the nervous system, such as noticing fight/flight/freeze when it occurs and working with that in the moment, rather than solely on talking or cognition. Somatic Experiencing offers healing without having to rehash the past or create a trauma narrative, and instead focuses on helping people become aware of how their body holds and responds to stress in the present moment. Somatic Experiencing is the work of Peter Levine, PhD who developed this modality from his observation that animals in the wild do not suffer from post-traumatic stress, and from studying and weaving together many body-focused modalities, and indigenious wisdom.

Internal Family Systems

I have been practicing Internal Family Systems (IFS) personally since 2017 and have been on a training journey as an IFS practitioner since 2020. This model offers powerful tools such as compassion and clarity for improving your relationship with yourself. It is based on the idea that we have multiple parts to our being that serve different roles in our system, such as manager parts that get us where we need to go, reactive parts that tend to be misunderstood and sometimes get us into trouble, and more tender, vulnerable parts that tend to be exiled from our conscious awareness but often hold the painful experiences and outdated beliefs of unworthiness or unlovability. IFS holds that we also all have within the Self, which is comprised of essential qualities such as perspective, curiosity, confidence, courage, and calm. The idea with IFS therapy is that we can, overtime, learn to tend and befriend all of our parts and relieve them of their burdens, so that we can be what is called, Self-Led- which essentially looks like being able to respond to life’s challenges with self-awareness and intention, rather than react from places of worry, anger and hurt. Internal Family Systems (IFS) offers a nonjudgmental, non-pathologizing framework for working through the stuck patterns that our parts find themselves in, and offers a way to unburden outdated beliefs and repair our relationship inside. It helps to tame Inner Critics, heal Perfectionism, and dial back anxiety and sadness, so that you don’t feel hijacked by your emotions or worries, and feel more led by your Inner Wisdom and Guidance with more confidence, courage, and calm.

In journey with you

I know how vulnerable it is to embark on a healing journey, and how hard it can be to get started with a new therapist. I will meet you where you are at every step of the way, and center you as in charge of where your therapy needs to go. I am transparent and collaborative throughout the therapy process, keep your goals top and center of mind, and will never hold uncomfortable silences or act like I know you better than you know yourself, like those horrible, cringy depictions of therapists on TV. I encourage clients to take what is helpful in therapy, and to tell me when something is not. If it seems like something I said or reflected back to you didn’t land well with you, I will check in with you and offer repair if it is needed.

If my approach sounds like it may be a good fit for you, please reach out and schedule a free consultation today.