How I Work

In my work with individuals, couples, and families, I listen very carefully to what people say and to what is not said. 

I believe that the meanings people make of events in their lives and the stories they construct about their experience are important to talk about. 

I believe that the client’s agenda for themselves sits at the heart of our work together, while I also seek to address popular ideas in our culture that may have some bearing on the client’s issues and experience. 

I work to be transparent in my interactions bringing my expertise and responses, as well as additional resources, into the conversation. 

I believe it is important to think and talk about how people use power in our culture, as well as in the therapeutic relationship.

Methods

To achieve their goals for therapy, the client and I together choose from a variety of methods: Talk-therapy, poetry, dreamwork, artwork, journaling, family-of-origin work, the relationship between client and therapist, exploring what is happening in the moment (in the client and in the client-therapist relationship), visualization, homework exercises, mindfulness.

Skill Development

Sometimes therapy involves skill development, and if desired we can work in these or other areas: relationship-building skills, self-esteem enhancement, mindfulness awareness, relaxation training, emotion-regulation skills*, distress-tolerance skills*. 
(*Based on Marsha Linehan’s Dialectical Behavior Therapy)

Couples

I have received John Gottman’s Advanced Marital Therapy Training and my work with couples is based on the Gottman Method, a compassionate and respectful way of working with couples that often brings about significant changes in their relationship by focusing on building the marital friendship, reducing hurtful conflict by understanding the physiology of fighting, and enhancing partner’s abilities to understand each other.

Couples work may also include:

   ¨      Identifying those intense and painful patterns that happen over and over, leaving each one feeling hurt and isolated - and mindfully and compassionately getting together on the same side.

   ¨      Exploring blocks to sexual and emotional intimacy, as well as addressing financial issues

   ¨      Exploration of each one’s family of origin (as it applies)

   ¨      Increasing self-care and learning to self-soothe

   ¨      Learning about personality styles and love languages.  This is particularly important as I often sit with two people who love each other but neither one feels loved.

   ¨      Learning to speak from the heart.  As Dan Wile says, “When we attack, we turn our partner into an enemy; when we withdraw we turn our partner into a stranger; but when we disclose, we turn our partner into an ally.”

I strive to work wholistically because the truth of the matter is that we cannot get around that mysterious way in which our emotions are connected to our thoughts as well as to our bodies; the way in which our soul’s vitality is connected to our health as well as to our spirituality (our sense of connection to something larger than ourselves); the way in which our well-being is enhanced in connections with people who know and love us

  o       Therefore, it is typical of me to inquire about your self-care on each of these levels – nutrition, exercise, spiritual practice, social support

I see that many of us flounder, looking outside ourselves for answers about how to live our lives, how to make decisions, what’s important.  I believe that there is a well-spring of wisdom that underlies all of life that we each can tap into; and when we do that we live our lives uniquely and with joy.  I want to help people connect to that underground artesian for themselves.  One of the main ways we can connect to that is by living mindfully.

            How do you expect to arrive at the end of your own journey

if you take the road to another man’s city? 

How do you expect to reach your own perfection by leading somebody else’s life? 

                                                                                    Thomas Merton

What is “mindfulness” and why is it important?

We all know that eating a piece of chocolate cake can be a very different experience depending on what you are doing while you are eating.  If you are actively engaged in a stimulating conversation or lost in an engrossing movie while eating it, you may barely taste it.  On the other hand, if you slow down, and savor each bite – the richness of the frosting, the smoothness of the cake, the way it satisfies taste and smell and connects to happy memories – your experience of the cake will be very different, as well as the satisfaction you derive from it. 

Life is like that.  Life is only made up of moments – this one right now while you are reading this, and this one now.  Time spent with friends, family, partners, children, pets, at work, in nature – everything we do can be enhanced by being more present to each moment.  We westerners are often so caught up in our heads (and that is a fine place to spend some of the time) that days can go by without our ever really touching down and being fully here.

Right now while I’m writing this I can have that sense of being just inside my thoughts, or I can broaden my awareness to include the fall light coming through the windows, and the bright colors in the dahlia bouquet on the periphery of my vision, and the feel of the couch behind and under me – as well as the experience of my hands typing – and in doing this I find myself taking a fuller breath.  I feel myself in this moment as well as being in it.

A main reason this kind of mindful awareness is important is that if we don’t pay attention we can be carried forward in our relationships with our selves and others on outdated beliefs and reactions, on intense feelings or fears.  Mindfulness allows us to see what is happening in us while it is happening – and that simple awareness creates more choice for us.

So you will often find me talking about tuning in to your own inner experience of the moment, to your body sensations and reactions, to all the “parts” of yourself.

Parts – another important idea in my work.  “A part of me wants to go out jogging today, but another part of me wants to stay in bed.”  We all relate to that kind of thinking.  In the big decisions of life, as well as in moment by moment interactions with the people we love, we need to stay aware of all the different parts of ourselves.  People often wonder why they make a decision and then sabotage it – I would say – “parts” are at work!  This person made the decision without bringing all the parts of themselves to the conference room of awareness – and when we don’t do this we are often surprised that we are unable to follow through. 

As well, many of us over-identify with certain parts of ourselves (I’m compassionate) and overlook other parts (I’m angry) and then are surprised when others point out what we can’t see.  We also often judge vulnerable parts of our self (e.g., a part that feels needy, or afraid to be alone) when what those parts really need is compassion.

Compassion  I’m big on compassion.  Most of us are not compassionate with ourselves (as well as with others).  And we all need it.  Lots of it.  So we might talk about what gets in the way of feeling compassion for others, as well as yourself.  My experience is that people who judge others harshly are usually three times as hard on themselves.

            "How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of   all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave.  Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us." 
Rainer Maria Rilke 

So compassion, or tenderness, is important for me to bring to our conversations.  But I have found, over the years, that tenderness needs to be balanced by a fierceness or a fearlessness.  Sometimes speaking a hard truth, in love, is just what’s needed.  And I don’t want to forget playfulness*.  The work in therapy can be so SERIOUS!  We need to lighten up sometimes, to laugh at ourselves, to see things in perspective. 

When we embrace our losses, we become fierce with reality.
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