Therapy for Individuals and Couples
Internal Family Systems
Mindfulness
& Somatics
Anxiety Reduction
Intrusive and persistent, from the surface anxiety often seems nonsensical. In counseling, we can slow down our experiences in order to re-educate and update the reactive parts of ourselves. Relief is possible.
Trauma Resolution
Caught in the past, traumatic experiences direct our biology into a system primed for emergency. Living on guard, our longings for freedom and connectivity cannot be realized. I offer resolution and change through well researched methodology.
Relationships
Beautiful and mind boggling, our relationships call forward the best and worst in people. Bringing your relationship to therapy supports the unwinding of well set patterns and the potential for feeling more connected with both your partner and yourself.
Somatic Awareness
Unlike thoughts, emotions live in the body. Our feelings, longings and hopes... these are all happening as a physical and even emergetic experience. Working somatically allows immediate access to actual experience and tangible change.
Wellness
Simplicity is not always easy to come by. Through insightful contact and an intention set toward clarity, counseling can support your emergence into joy and satisfaction.
Mindfulness
Mindfulness is the shifting of our attention towards an inner awareness where we can begin to sense into phsysical sensations and then into emotional experience, and then even further into meaning and memory. This is an important skill to learn in order for therapy to be effective.
About Me
Working as a therapist since 2003, I graduated from the Somatic Psychology Counseling program with John F. Kennedy University in the Bay Area. It was then one of three graduate programs in the country specializing in Somatics. What was then cutting edge is now the standard for care in the counseling field, as the profession has come to understand the relationship between our physical experience and our emotional well being.
Following graduate school, I entered into community mental health serving a vast array of people from all walks of life and states of wellness or discord. In that time, I learned to work with all ages and with just about any need. In 2007, I began work in private practice, further investing into skill sets that invite real change. Hakomi, EMDR and Internal Family Systems operate out of principles that build internal resources and empower clients through experiential discovery.
Several years after my return to Asheville, North Carolina, I was able to train directly with the Hakomi Institute. This is a model that inspired other important contributions to the therapy field including Somatic Experiencing and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy. Hakomi instills principles that preserve deep respect for the client, engages mindfulness in important ways, and is a somatic model… which means that the emotional/physical experience happening in the room is one doorway into ‘what really matters’ in therapy.
While Hakomi provides a foundation for my work, I went on to obtain certification in EMDR, a well-established treatment for trauma. I have training in Gestalt Therapy and Dialectical Behavior Therapy and became a practitioner of Jin Shin Jyutsu, a Japanese hands on healing modality. However, I found my clinical home with a model known as Internal Family Systems (IFS). In a most unassuming way, it integrates all I have learned as a clinician and completes the circle, so to speak, inviting definitive change. It is a joy to work through the IFS lens and to experience the clarity made available through the work. I continue to seek out learning experiences within the IFS community through advanced trainings and serving as a program assistant.
Alongside these years of clinical work, I cultivated a meditation practice that both supports my own well being and influences the nature of the work I do. While meditation is not something I offer in a session, mindfulness is a sister to that practice and a big part of sessions in my office. Mindfulness allows for an awareness of thoughts, feelings and sensations that would otherwise slip past unawares.
To end, I am married and a mother of two who are rapidly growing and taking over the house. This role in my life brings a strong dose of unpredictability into my daily life as well as a great deal of love. It’s a huge and wonderful growth curve for me as a person to juggle the many details a family brings and still be available for its riches.
