My Treatment Philosophy:
The Alternative to Being is Reacting, and Reacting Interrupts Being and Annihilates.
- D.W. Winnocott
In my view, we are all here to be the unique individual that only we can become. This is our contribution to the collective; our gift to the universe. Experiences that cause pain can block our ability to 'show up' and engage with life openly, fully. Therapy can be a catalyst, identifying and removing obstacles to the natural unfolding of the psyche. In my work, I employ many 'Evidence Based Practice' methods from a depth-oriented, human-centered, existential framework. Most of us experience our suffering as a form of 'tensing up' when we have a memory of loss or intrusion triggered by something happening now. This is what Freud referred to the 'compulsion to repeat' that therapists exploit for all it is worth in therapy. A more apt phrase for it though in my view is a term used by Mark Epstein, "anticipating the past". My aim as a therapist is to help my clients realize that the pain they are tensing up in anticipation of has already happened. Once this occurs in therapy, there is only one thing to do: grieve.
Surrendering is Warrior Work...
In my work with Couples, my primary aim is to facilitate the experience of 'feeling felt.' At the same time, I work to help support the members of the couple system to hold onto themselves, while learning how to regain the ability to make good use of the presence of the partner to co-regulate each member's nervous system. Pair-Bonding is a great gift and strength of our species; allowing us to do difficult and great things. When the co-regulatory function has gone into disrepair or broken down, we can feel lost. Getting this capacity back into a more robust state can shift cycles of communication from vicious to more virtuous territory. Healing in the couple domain is not a matter of solving problems, but of becoming more collaborative and flexible and loving and playful, in the approach and navigation of the next rock in the road. For the road ahead, is likely to be fairly strewn with rocks. What joy to know that having problems is not a problem.
The Beloved is the Beloved - Even on not their Best Day...
- D.W. Winnocott
In my view, we are all here to be the unique individual that only we can become. This is our contribution to the collective; our gift to the universe. Experiences that cause pain can block our ability to 'show up' and engage with life openly, fully. Therapy can be a catalyst, identifying and removing obstacles to the natural unfolding of the psyche. In my work, I employ many 'Evidence Based Practice' methods from a depth-oriented, human-centered, existential framework. Most of us experience our suffering as a form of 'tensing up' when we have a memory of loss or intrusion triggered by something happening now. This is what Freud referred to the 'compulsion to repeat' that therapists exploit for all it is worth in therapy. A more apt phrase for it though in my view is a term used by Mark Epstein, "anticipating the past". My aim as a therapist is to help my clients realize that the pain they are tensing up in anticipation of has already happened. Once this occurs in therapy, there is only one thing to do: grieve.
Surrendering is Warrior Work...
In my work with Couples, my primary aim is to facilitate the experience of 'feeling felt.' At the same time, I work to help support the members of the couple system to hold onto themselves, while learning how to regain the ability to make good use of the presence of the partner to co-regulate each member's nervous system. Pair-Bonding is a great gift and strength of our species; allowing us to do difficult and great things. When the co-regulatory function has gone into disrepair or broken down, we can feel lost. Getting this capacity back into a more robust state can shift cycles of communication from vicious to more virtuous territory. Healing in the couple domain is not a matter of solving problems, but of becoming more collaborative and flexible and loving and playful, in the approach and navigation of the next rock in the road. For the road ahead, is likely to be fairly strewn with rocks. What joy to know that having problems is not a problem.
The Beloved is the Beloved - Even on not their Best Day...
