I have had extensive training in Nonviolent Communication (NVC)™, Mindfulness Meditation, Lifespan Integration, Family Systems Theory, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), Emotionally-Focused Couples Therapy and Self-Relations therapy based on the work and writings of Stephen Gilligan, a student of Milton Erickson.  I also have experience and familiarity with and deep respect for 12 step recovery work.

I believe our pain is a gift. A terrible gift, but a gift, nonetheless. Suffering arises when we see it as otherwise, when we hide from our pain and hide our pain from others. This kind of thinking and acting leads to separation from others and from our deepest essence. Counseling and healing are about approaching these cut off parts of ourselves and re-membering them, making space for them in our bodies and in our lives. As we heal we stop running from these parts of ourselves and learn to integrate them.

Thus, much of my work is about creating a safe enough space for you to compassionately welcome all of yourself back into your heart, even the parts of you that you find ugly or painful or difficult. It is counter-intuitive, but it is in turning toward the parts of ourselves that we have been avoiding that creates healing and the possibility of change. Integration, wholeness and lasting change can only happen when the parts of you that you have sent into exile find a home and a place to belong within you.

I consider myself a mindfulness-based therapist meaning I focus on what is happening for you in the present moment. It will be our ability to have an authentic human-to-human connection in the present moment while in the therapy session that will allow for healing. As your therapist I will invite you to learn to be more in the present moment, which is where you can access your own wisdom and answers and where the stuck places from the past can be resolved.

In all if this I am informed by the best practices of Western Psychology as well as the ancient contemplative practices of the East. Eastern practices emphasize a radical acceptance of our actual experience, the way things are, and ending the war we often have with each unfolding moment. In coming to open to and accept each moment as it is, we begin to develop more self-compassion, clarity of mind, acceptance and a greater capacity to handle with lightness and curiosity the challenges of our changing lives.

Lifespan Integration™(LI)

In the past ten years there has been a deepening understanding of the brain because of new technologies that have allowed scientists to look more closely at brain functioning.  As a result, there has been a new collaboration between neurobiology and psychotherapy.  It is an exciting and hopeful time as scientists used to believe that the brain did not change at all after adolescence.  Now it is believed that the brain has plasticity and is open to change throughout the lifecycle.  This means that even severely traumatized people whose brain development was interrupted by psychological trauma can heal.  A number of new therapies have come out of this new science, therapies that target changing deep neural patterning so that people can free themselves from their habitual defensive and destructive responses to their lives.  Thus, in developing new neural pathways, they can find new and more healthy responses to all life challenges. 

Lifespan Integration is one of the these new therapies.  Developed in 2002 by Peggy Pace, Lifespan Integration is a new method of therapy for treating trauma and helping people heal from the wounds of childhood.   The wounds of childhood , particularly those around our attachment to our parents, can interrupt our brain developing  the ability to regulate our emotional life.  Such dysregulation can lead to depression, anxiety, relationship issues, or just simply being overwhelmed by life.  Through the Lifespan Integration protocol, particularly through taking people through a timeline of memories and images of their lives, the neural system becomes updated and people are no longer stuck responding to the present like it was the past.  After LI treatment people have reported responding to life stressors in more age-appropriate ways.  People become more self-accepting and find more joy in their lives.  They also seem better able to cope with life stressors, better able to regulate their emotional lives. 

Lifespan Integration is a very gentle and respectful therapy.  The changes and healing also happen fairly rapidly for most people.  I have added this therapy recently to the individual work I offer because I see in this therapy a great deal of promise and hope.  I also feel it is alligned and in the same spirit as the other ways I offer therapy and healing.