Individual Therapy
Each Day You Can Start Anew to Make the Life You Want
There are many reasons why you may be unhappy at this part of your life. A relationship alludes you or ends, the clock is ticking if you are a woman who wants to have children, you are bored with your job or it seems to be going nowhere, you have a dream, but cannot make it happen. Something is in the way, not right.
For some individuals, we know that something is very wrong – and we are depressed or unhappy. There can be conflict or even violence in relationships. Certain people or events at work really get to us – but it isn’t clear how to deal with it.
Individual therapy is the most direct exploration of your feelings and life experiences in the safe environment with me. We are in charge of our feelings and the decisions we make in the process of creating our lives. The process of exploration is therefore one of discovery and clarity.
Connecting with your feelings takes you to what is happening now. But often you have felt this way before – earlier in your life. Or you know you have residual pain and anger from childhood trauma or abandonment. Reconnecting with these feelings is a way to get your thoughts and feelings to align, become congruent.
The Night Blooming Cerius is a flower that blooms for only one night but also gives a wonderful fragrance. The flower is a symbol that life is fleeting, moment to moment never to return except in our memories, a reminder to make the most of each day.
What to Expect:
Psychotherapy is a process of exploration and growth, of connecting with your feelings and finding your voice to create the life and relationships you want.
A complimentary appointment is offered to explore your needs and the fit between us for working together. I will ask you to share with me why you have come and we will go forward from there to see if your needs are something I can help you with.
Appointments: I am flexible in accommodating your schedule for appointment times as best that I can. If you need to change an appointment time, I will find another time that will work for you as soon as possible in my schedule.
I do not prescribe medication but I work with clients who receive medication from their primary care physician or psychiatrist.
Information: I will need your name, e-mail address, address and telephone number for my records.
Fees: My fee is $125 per hour. I have a sliding scale which I can discuss with you at the first meeting if you cannot afford my regular fee. I ask you to pay at each session unless you make other arrangements with me for weekly or monthly payments.
Insurance: I do not take insurance. I can provide you with statements for use in attempting to gain reimbursement from your insurance or from your health care account. Different employers use different terms for this discretionary spending account.
HIPPA Notice of Privacy: I do not share any confidential information with anyone concerning your care. If you ask me to send reports of any kind, I will share them with you before they are sent to make certain you are comfortable with what I am sharing. This ensures complete confidentiality for your personal information shared with me.
If you have lost that connection with yourself, or have never felt it, I can help you discover yourself at any stage of your life.
There are many topics we can explore together, including how to:
Live Authentically
We are our most authentic self when our thoughts and feelings are aligned, centered in ourselves, grounded. Others call it, feeling comfortable in our own skin.
When we also have language to express ourselves from that centered space, we have our voice and can act. We are empowered from that place.
It is not easy to be in our authentic space in a noisy world, crowded with action, moving at a fast space.
Authenticity requires awareness and reflection – what am I feeling, what does it mean in my life, what is my purpose, the meaning of my life.
Young children sometimes say very authentic, insightful things – but they do not yet have the cognitive ability and language to make things happen from that space. But their experiences and feelings are valid and authentic.
A part of ourselves is often trapped in those feelings experienced in childhood. Sometimes we are able to connect with them through reflection – but most powerful is having someone to listen – to accept, respect, value and not to judge, question or criticize.
Discover Your Story
The way we connect with another or others is by telling our story – both the facts and our feelings about how we have experienced our lives. If there have been painful or confusing things about our lives, we sometimes don’t really know either the facts – or the feelings.
When children experience very traumatic events in their families, the feelings are often buried, no longer available to them. Yet they come out under conditions that create problems for oneself, at school or the work environment, in relationships.
When parents fight, children know something is wrong and are frightened. But if parents tell their children they are divorcing – without anything being obviously wrong – it is very confusing for children, a loss of trust in their own ability to know when something is wrong. In families with conflict, children, or some children in the family, become the object of parents’ anger and that child is abused, physically and emotionally. It becomes very hard for the other children. If they love that brother or sister, they are very upset when that child is targeted. But they are also grateful it is not happening to them – and pull away.
All of these experiences affect that person as an adult, carried over into dysfunctional relationships as well.
As we share our story and hear the story of another, we begin to “know” each other. Trusting to share and receiving sharing create intimacy – the things we don’t share in ordinary life begin to weave a fabric of connection between us that takes us beyond the chemistry of attraction into a relationship.
When you come for therapy, you come because something is not working in your life the way you want it to. As you share your story with me, exploring together, you will discover new things about yourself. You are also laying a foundation for a relationship with others in your life outside of and beyond therapy.
“When you can’t control the winds, adjust your sails”
Cope with Loss & Grief
Grief is an active process of coming to terms with the loss and all of the ways the loss affects our lives. Grief is a difficult and lonely, often all consuming, process especially if we are alone or not connecting with others in our world. The culture does not help, expecting us to recover, “get over it,” “move beyond it,” “get on with life.” None of those things help or are comforting.
If you are experiencing personal life experiences of grief and loss, I am an open and caring listener as you traverse this world. It is a world I am familiar with.
I have an entire page on Grief & Loss:
Cultivate Empowerment
Empowerment is the power to act. Empowerment is the ability to give momentum to creating our dreams through specific concrete steps that deliberately lead us to the place we want to be.
But empowerment is more than that. In fact, empowerment is fundamental to being able to act. Empowerment is a process of internal reflection about our thoughts, feelings, and life experiences which allow us to connect with who we really are. We hit pay dirt inside ourselves when we connect with the buried fears, pain, and confusion from previous life experiences, which block our being able to act in ways that help us achieve our goals.
When we connect with that mine inside ourselves, there is sometimes an automatic self-correcting tape that says, "It is not that way now." We have grown in our understanding of life and have now reconnected with that old place that limited us. When this happens, new energy becomes available for living every time this happens and we have new direction for what we want most in our life.
But life is not usually as simple as that. Our mind plays powerful tricks to seal off those painful experiences. We experience anxiety every time we come close to those old buried places. We must learn how to feel safe when we go there — through music, writing poetry, painting, movement and through trusting another human being to be a companion in our excavation.
Empowerment is that connection with an awareness of the deepest part of ourselves. It is also the process of becoming that person we most long to be. Empowerment is openness to new experiences, to seeing the world in new ways that will allow us greater freedom to be ourselves.
Find Your Voice
The poignancy in the 80th birthday celebration for my late husband Armin was that illness was overtaking him. His remarks were a gathering together of his lifetime and voice.
You can read his remarks here on our blog
Often it isn’t clear what we want or why we are having difficulty making it happen. Powerful emotions or feelings often lie beneath the surface influencing us – without our awareness. So we must first connect with those feelings, be reflective about where they originated and how they are affecting our current feelings and life situations. But understanding is not enough. We have to speak back or out about those feelings – to find our voice and use it.
The movie, “The King’s Speech,” is based on the true story of King George VI of England. The DVD cover reads “Find Your Voice.” The Duke of York is the second son of his father, King George V. He stammers, a lifelong debilitating speech impediment. And it is the dawning of the world of radio, his father the first King to address “my people” in the new medium.
With the persistence of his wife she finds a man, Lionel Logue who works with persons who have speech defects. While both the Duke and his wife see this problem as a mechanical one, Lionel tries to both teach the Duke ways to lessen the tension in his throat and voice and probes deeper to learn the source of the tension which prevents the Duke from speaking clearly. The Duke is opposed to this invasion of his “private life” but he participates for a while in the “treatment.”
When his father dies and his brother abdicates the throne, the Duke of York suddenly becomes King George VI. First he must get through the coronation and soon afterward, England is at war with Germany. To lead his people, the King must now speak to them.
Lionel is not necessarily a skillful psychotherapist nor is the Duke a willing “participant.” But he is on the right track. Lionel speaks with great respect to the Duke of his courage and strength, helps him see the source of his difficulties from his early childhood and ongoing interactions with both his father and his brother. At the request of the King, Lionel coaches him through all of his speeches during the war – the King becoming a powerful inspiration to the people of England.
When the King makes his first successful speech, announcing they are at war with Germany, the King’s self-confidence is evident in his body as he walks through the applause of those around him. The support of his loving wife and daughters is powerful but it is the expert help of Lionel, the respect that Lionel speaks to “Bertie” that helps him Find His Voice.
The description on the DVD reads, “The two men forge an unlikely friendship that will ultimately empower the monarch to find his voice, inspire his people and rally the world.” That process is what I hope will happen with my clients in whatever way is meaningful for them.
The nature of their relationship of respect and the process of connecting with feelings and finding your voice is a process I live with my clients.