What's My Approach to Therapy?
Feeling weary? If you are tired of being stuck in the same old patterns, I can help. Radical acceptance of yourself can lead to the radical change you want. Therapy with me is LGBTQ+ supporting and welcomes your identity: queer, non-binary, trans, polyamorous, kinky, and fabulous. Therapy with me is neurodiversity affirming and respectful of your Autistic, ADHD, or otherwise neurodivergent style of thinking, processing, and relating. Therapy with me is fat liberating and focuses on accepting your body as it is and finding freedom from diet culture.
Issues we can address together include:
Trauma: Learn how trauma from your past affects you in the present. We will begin by focusing on ways for you to recognize your trauma responses and cope with them right now.
Relationships: Learn what is getting in the way of having the kinds of relationships you want. Try new ways of communicating that give you more flexibility and help you get your needs met.
Anxiety and depression: Learn how to be compassionate with yourself and your moods. Explore how your moods may be understandable responses to oppression and internalized oppression.
I am a Gestalt therapist. Gestalt therapy is interactive and creative. As a therapist, I am warm and genuine, curious about you and compassionate about what you're going through, and open about my thoughts and the therapy process. If you think we might be a good match, I hope you will get in touch.
My Practice & Services
I work with people in person in my Cambridge office or via telehealth when needed. A wheelchair-accessible office is available by request; please ask me for more information.
On the Fence About Going to Therapy?
Therapy can be great if you have a therapist who is right for you. Are you wondering whether to try individual therapy? Here are my top ten reasons to consider it:
1. You feel stuck in some way and can't seem to get unstuck no matter how hard you try. A good therapist can help you figure out why you feel stuck and how to move in the direction you want.
2. You have trouble with relationships. Maybe your relationships don't go well for you or maybe you aren't able to form relationships at all. The most helpful thing about psychotherapy is that it is a relationship, one that can both teach you about healthy relationships and give you support.
3. Your emotions don't make sense to you. Maybe you suspect you are overreacting emotionally and having big feelings about small things. Maybe you are underreacting and not in touch with your feelings much at all. Or maybe you are numbing yourself so you don't have to deal with those pesky feelings. A therapist can help you to explore your feelings at your own pace and teach you how to do it on your own.
4. You suspect events from your past are negatively affecting your present. Traumatic events can affect us over our lifetimes in different ways. Therapy can help you learn how to cope with your reactions to your trauma history, explore your feelings and memories in a safe way, and figure out how to move on with your life.
5. You worry you are overburdening your family or friends with your problems. It can help to have time set aside for yourself every week to talk about your problems in therapy. It can take the pressure off of others in your life and offer a space for healing and growth.
6. Your anxiety or depression are making your life smaller and smaller. You find yourself pulling back from others, feeling lonely, and trying to avoid situations that might trigger your feelings. Therapy can help you to change your outlook to a more expansive, connected one.
7. You question how to live with authenticity. It can be challenging to figure out who you are, how you got to be that way, and whether you'd like to change. A therapist can help you think it through.
8. Your coping strategies aren't working well for you any more. Even though you learned to cope in particular ways for good reasons, sometimes those coping strategies expire and stop working. Therapy can help you develop new ways to cope.
9. You feel like your life is out of balance. Maybe you can't seem to balance all of your responsibilities in the way you'd like, maybe you have too much stress in your life, maybe you constantly feel like you can't find any stable ground to stand on. Therapy can help you to create a more balanced life for yourself and learn to ground yourself when you are under a lot of stress.
10. You are open to learning something new. If you are willing to challenge your thinking and learn new ways to make your life meaningful, therapy can help you with that.
Importance of the Client-Therapist Alliance
In order for individual therapy to be worth your time and effort and money, it has to be more effective than a popular psychology book. Right? Otherwise, you could check out a book from the library, read it, implement the suggestions, and be done.
Some of those books have great ideas. Many are written by experts. They are often easy to read with clear suggestions and strategies to try.
So why try psychotherapy? Why would psychotherapy be any more helpful than reading a book about your problems?
The therapy relationship.
The therapy relationship -- the relationship between client and therapist -- is what makes individual psychotherapy effective (or ineffective). Research shows that it is the quality of the therapy relationship, rather than the particular therapy methods used, that predicts success.
I know this is kind of weird because nobody comes into therapy saying, "The reason I am here is so I can have a good therapy relationship." People want help solving their problems, working towards personal growth, feeling better about themselves, and improving all of their other relationships.
But we heal in relationship, not alone. We heal and grow in connection with others. The therapy relationship is one of those healing relationships that allows you to really connect with another human being: your therapist.
Without connection, therapy is no more useful than a popular psychology book or a good magazine article about your problem. Therefore, you need a therapist who will do a good job at connecting with you and you need to do your best to connect also.
The connection is more important than the therapist's philosophy of therapy, more important than the interventions the therapist makes or the advice the therapist offers. Connection usually is not sufficient for therapy to be effective, but connection is necessary for it to be effective.
So if therapy was not helpful for you in the past, pay attention to how connected you are feeling when you consider working with a particular therapist.
