Are you feeling stuck or overwhelmed? Would you like to change, but don’t know where to begin?
Many of my clients are bravely navigating anxiety, CPTSD, grief, loss, depression, and varying levels of self-esteem. Some find themselves in disempowering relationships needing support to get on their feet or back in the driver’s seat of their lives.
I draw from my experience and multiple trainings in somatic trauma healing, including Somatic Experiencing®, to offer support in moving through the impact of relational and developmental trauma and childhood wounds in order to form safe, connected relationships.
As we become able to access sensation, images, dreams, art, and memories, we can work consciously with what is available to us. It can be scary and seem overwhelming to try and change patterns of stress by ourselves. I offer guidance to people who are ready to shift patterns, clear the shadows, and be transformed.
Couples Counseling
Investing in couples counseling with the right counselor, can bring so much hope and relief when you have been stuck and unable to create the relationship you once had or wish you had. I help couples get on a clear path together, learning to love the way each of you wants and needs but may never have been taught. A secure attachment style can be co-created in adulthood even when that wasn’t what you got in childhood. As you both become more secure in your attachment, less anxious, less avoidant, life becomes easier to navigate as a team. If you have children, they will thank you (one day far in the future) for putting in the work now.
By identifying the pattern you are stuck in and addressing the relational trauma at the root of your challenges, I help you create new, functional patterns of communication, boundaries, and intimacy so you will be able to attune to yourself and your partner in real time, and apologize and repair when you miss the moment. I bring awareness of emotional triggers in a way that is manageable, so you can increase your capacity to stay present even in discomfort and disagreement. You will begin to notice familiar urges and how to pause before saying the thing you will regret. I bring deep listening and engagement without judgment.
In your relationship, you are modeling love and intimacy for the next generation. Love is an energy and a choice that can be felt, accessed, and will help you get through the hard times in life in a sustainable way. As long as you are both ready to put the work in, and there aren’t any contraindications present, such as Intimate Partner Violence (IPV), you are capable of changing your relationship for the better with some good guidance to get on the same path.
I offer 80-min. couples sessions and also couples intensive weekends which are ideal for couples with young children, demanding schedules, or those in a crisis point in their relationship who need in-depth support in order to move forward in life together or separately. Please Contact me with questions/ interest.
The couples therapists who I have trained with and who most inform my work with couples include Terry Real (I have completed Relational Life Therapy (Couples Intensives, Level 1, and other RLT trainings), Stan Tatkin (Attachment and Betrayal trauma training), and Dave Berger (couples training as part of my Advanced 2 Somatic Experiencing® training). What all these teachers have in common is an awareness of the need to heal and integrate childhood attachment/relational trauma, and the importance of learning how to communicate well, practice attunement and co-regulate. I am a trained, competent guide to help you get on a solid path.
In my personal life, I work on my own relational healing through therapy/somatic integration, and practicing healthy communication and boundaries in life together with my husband. Intimacy is something we work on each day, a lifelong practice, and totally worth it.
