My Approach to Helping
My passion as a therapist is rooted in the healing power of creativity. I strongly value curiosity and exploration, and believe that we all deserve a loving and compassionate space, free of judgment, to explore our selves, our feelings, our wounds, and dreams. My approach is collaborative, holistic and integrative drawing from relational, expressive arts, psychodynamic, somatic and mindfulness techniques. Together we attend to your body and mind, as their symbiotic relationship is integral to your mental and emotional health. I also strongly believe in the healing effects that the therapeutic relationship itself can elicit. Having an ally, an emotional and mental sanctuary, a sounding board, and a constant positive presence in our lives can be profoundly impactful and it is what I provide to each of my clients.
I offer both individual and couples therapy. When working with couples, I primarily use PACT (The Psychobiological Approach to Couples Therapy). Couples therapy can offer support when you and your partner are feeling out of sync, struggling to communicate, wondering if you want to separate or stay together, experiencing parenting challenges or big life changes. Working through this process helps you and your parter discover how to stay connected, help each other feel safe and secure, manage one another’s emotional high and lows, fight well, reignite your love, and minimize each other’s stress.
More Info About My Practice
I am seeing clients both online and in-person in my downtown Ballard office.
Specific Issue(s) I'm Skilled at Helping With
Life Transitions
Life transitions are tricky. They test our ability to dwell in the unknown. The unknown is scary. These major transitions can be wanted or unwanted, and therefore accompanied by mixed emotions of joy, excitement, anxiety and grief. Together we will work through the concurrent feelings to identify your resiliency and strengths to help you on your journey through your current period of uncertainty to uncover the life you want.
Perinatal Mental Health
In pregnancy and the postpartum period a multitude of different feelings and experiences arise due to the unique process. Some can be expected, and match norms popularized by dominant media, and others can feel foreign, not right, or cause grief and shame because they do not match the popularized norms. This life changing experience forces you to reform your identity, whether it be your 1st pregnancy or 5th. I can hold the feelings that arise and help you become the caregiver you hope to be.
Self-Love
Learning how to love ourselves can be a difficult task, even in an era that popularizes the concepts of self-care and self-love. Self-love is more than a bath bomb and a good tub soak, though that's not a bad place to start. Often self-esteem issues root back to a defensive coping mechanism adopted early in life for protection, but ultimately harms us and keep us from living a full life. We will work together to build your confidence and make it safe to be vulnerable and love yourself.
How Psychotherapy Can Help
The pace and style of our work is tailored to you uniquely, and I consider you to be the expert on yourself. Psychotherapy helps you tap into your resiliency and self-knowledge by offering a relationship built on trust, empathy and safety. This safety makes it possible for you to experience vulnerability and a wide range of emotions from joy to pain. By processing your emotions you are able to identify your needs and together we work to determine how to best meet them. Sledging through the muck isn't always easy, and sometimes you feel worse before you get better. However, once you get to the other side you can take pride in your resiliency, and with greater self-understanding look upon yourself with compassion and love.
Why Going to Therapy Does Not Mean You are Weak or Flawed
Therapy can be hard. It is difficult to work through the hard feelings and the aspects of yourself that you would prefer to keep hidden. It is difficult to put your trust in a stranger and make yourself vulnerable. Therapy is not for the meek or the weak. Asking for help is a sign of strength, as is vulnerability. It is also the first step on your journey to claiming what you want for yourself.
