Individual Counseling
I work with adult individuals experiencing a variety of internal and external barriers to achieving full agency in their lives: limiting beliefs and behaviors, habituated relational patterns, post-traumatic stress reactions, etc. Here are some of the themes we can explore together:
- Anxiety and fear, or a general sense of being overwhelmed by everyday experiences; a tendency to withdraw; reestablishing safety to more fully engage.
- Difficulty taking in support; an ongoing sense of deprivation or an exaggerated aspiration towards self-reliance; distinguishing between reliable and unreliable support.
- Conflicts between freedom and closeness; difficulty expressing oneself and over-accommodating; re-accessing our own preferences, autonomy, and truth.
- Feeling “never quite good enough”; overachieving and overefforting; cultivating self-acceptance and easefulness.
- Post-traumatic stress reactions due to high impact falls or injuries, inescapable attacks, natural disasters, war experiences, and various forms of oppression; connecting with one’s own agency, resources, and natural support systems.
Couples Counseling
I help people experience more secure and satisfying connection in diverse types of two-person relationships. I work with monogamous relationships, consensually non-monogamous relationships, and sexual and gender minority relationships. Here are some of the themes we can explore together:
- Balancing the drive for individuality and the drive for togetherness.
- Studying how you construct your experience in your interactions, including family-of-origin influences; taking responsibility for your own experience and contributions; stepping outside of limiting, self-reinforcing relational dynamics.
- Improving communication and negotiation skills; avoiding projections and distortions; completing interactions in a more satisfying way.
- Rebalancing power differentials, restoring trust, reestablishing safety.
- Working with nervous system and trauma-related activation; remaining resourced in the face of relational disruptions.
- Orienting towards hopefulness and possibility; experiencing the relationship as a source of comfort and security; co-constructing shared purpose, vision, and principles that govern the relationship.