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, systems of oppression, 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.

Relationship Counseling

I help people experience more satisfying connection in diverse types of relationships.  I work with monogamous and consensually non-monogamous relationships, sexual and gender minority relationships, friendships, and family 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.