What you can expect from me

I pride myself on straightforward explanations and incorporating feedback. You should know fairly early on (first session or two) how what we're doing is supposed to help. If you don't, or you're not sure, and you say so, I will incorporate that and try to steer things back on a path you can believe in.

As we progress, I'll be tuning into what you're saying, playing it back to you with attempts at refinements and prompts to go deeper, and occasionally asking probing questions or redirecting conversation to maintain the right level of focus and intensity in growth areas. Expect to feel a bit challenged, but not overwhelmed, and also supported and recognized. It may take some trust to believe that I genuinely do think well of you, but I've found that with most people that I've talked to, there is almost always some virtue, value or positive quality that's behind having made it this far, even if you've been feeling unsure that you can go on. Experiencing it that someone hears that and acknowledges it can be part of the process too.

If you've been going through something that involves a risk to safety, like suicidal thoughts, violent circumstances, ongoing substance use, self-harm or similar, we can have fairly explicit and direct conversations about my capacities and limitations there. I have a crisis work background and am not going to run at the first mention of drinking or suicidal ideation. I also don't have the same capabilities as intensive outpatient program, a hospital or a community response team. If it's helpful to talk more about limits and levels of care, we can do that.

What does therapy look like

People I’ve helped often started off with:

• life having the color drained out of it
• overwhelm from current events or responsibilities
• “brain fog”, or problems focusing
• painful memories they struggled to make sense of and put to rest
• disrupted sleep
• chronic health issues (for example, pain, incompletely healed injuries, metabolic and digestive disorders – I am not a doctor and don’t diagnose medical issues, but I do deal with the mental side of issues like this)
• problems in their friendships and relationships
• feeling painfully set apart from or different than other people
• difficulty setting and sticking with goals
• a feeling of lacking direction, purpose or meaning

Descriptions like these cut across almost all diagnosable mental illnesses, including depression, anxiety, PTSD, ADHD, personality disorders and so on. We may arrive at a formal diagnosis, but that’s not necessarily the very best possible guide for how we can work.

Subjective states of being like those in the list above are in my opinion often closer to the core of what it is to have a thing you want to go to therapy for: gaining hope for resolving them means your life is already improving, and moving through them to a successful conclusion means that your life is now where you have been wanting it to get to. 

After working with me for multiple sessions, people with subjectively stated issues like above who reached a state of resolution tend to say things like:

• It’s easier to get out of bed in the morning.
• I enjoy things again.
• Life can be stressful but I’m usually confident I can roll with it.
• The things that have been bothering me constantly have softened and faded into things I can live with.
• I feel like I’m back in the driver’s seat.
• My responsibilities are manageable.
• I remember my past, and maybe sometimes it still hurts, but it doesn’t rule my present anymore.
• I feel better about who I am.
• I’m more at peace with people around me.
• The things I’m doing and the story I’m living out feel like they matter.

Who I work with

Talk to me if you're an adult ages 20-55 and you feel like your memories, mood, relationships, energy or other qualities of your experience don't look like a life you would have imagined you would want to live. That could look like a suspicion from a primary care provider, physical therapist or other medical professional that there's something you should get checked out, or it could just be your own sense that maybe a different approach to life could be better but you haven't quite been able to work it out yet. With a signed release, I'm happy to work with other people who are helping you recover from or cope with physical injury or chronic illnesses, or who are involved in prescribing you medication.

Due to the specialized requirements needed to give effective treatment, I do not treat OCD or eating disorders. I am however happy to work with other providers covering these issues if you are working with the right people on that already, or can start a new relationship with them if these are issues that we discover while you're working with me.

What's in the first session

We'll talk both about what you're coming in for, and about how therapy with me works and how it can be tailored to what you need. It's important for you to have some realistic hope and sense of direction for the process, or at least a bit of willingness to try riding out the uncertainty and discomfort of wondering if it could possibly work, if I'm the right person for you and if you can stick with it. We will also spend a bit of time talking about limits and possible harm, not that I think you will definitely be running into either, but because I believe it helps confidence in the process to know that I take it seriously that it can go wrong and will take active steps to try to prevent that. Come as ready as you can be to talk about what's been bothering you, including if part of that is difficulty opening up, acknowledging struggles or sticking with the discomfort of showing sides of yourself you don't usually. I'll ask for a bit of your help and a bit of your trust in forming that into a plan that you can provide feedback on about whether it feels credible or not and whether it's getting down to the real issues.