Equanimity is the heart and soul of my approach to therapy.

The heart of therapy is instilling the hope of equanimity – learning to find a sense of calmness within yourself and coming back to that consistently, especially during times of distress and unease.  I work to create a safe space for you to dig deep into the story you are telling - the words that you use to describe your beliefs and your values to help you move closer to the feelings that scare you and keep you in discomfort. We’ll work on the tools of self-compassion and self-love to help you move towards a place of self-acceptance.  

Therapy is not just about feeling good nor is it about fixing you.  It’s about helping you remember, time and time again, to return to calmness so that you can respond from a place of integrity instead of reacting to the circumstances around you.  We’ll work to help you know yourself and your stuff  - our habitual ways of reacting to life during time of unease.  We’ll look a finding a different way so that you can learn to respond during these times. And finally, we’ll work at helping you learn to catch yourself each time you are able to do life in a different way.

Anxiety and Stress

Stress is worry about the future, a place you cannot control. When you are stressed you may experience many different feelings – sadness, anger, and forgetfulness, to name a few. I will work with you to understand that stress is your internal reaction to the world and circumstances that surround you. We work together to help you learn to manage these reactions by learning to live with intention. We’ll identify your triggers and we’ll also look at how your lifestyle may be contributing to your anxiety.  We’ll examine your values and beliefs so that you can hold on to those that support you and help you live in integrity. We’ll practice self-regulation – deep breathing, reframing, relaxation techniques that will allow you to come back to yourself to find peace even in times of unease.

Boundaries in Relationships

We need relationships with others. But without boundaries, our relationships suffer. Boundaries are like those really pretty fences you see at horse farms.  You can see through them, you can get over them and even climb through them. However, without permission, you can get into trouble.  Horses are powerful and when frightened they have the ability to trample you. In relationships, we sometimes struggle with knowing where we stop and another person starts. We may believe that we have to be “just alike” to have intimate relationship. We’ll work on identifying what does working your relationships. We’ll look at how you relate to others in the different roles you have to gain insight into how your thoughts and beliefs about relationships are affecting how you set boundaries.

Grief and Loss

We will experience many different types of losses over the course of our lifetime. We may lose a loved one, a relationship, loss of financial security or even the loss of our younger self. This is time that we may feel or try to avoid intense feelings. You may push yourself to be around people or you may find yourself withdrawing. You may notice there is an intensity to your feelings that seems out of place. We’ll work together to help you integrate all these feelings you have so that you can transform through your grief, adapt and begin to live your life in a meaningful way. Your loss will not be erased – it happened – but the pain can be eased. We’ll look at your strengths to help you begin to remember that life does have meaning and purpose. 

Coparenting/Custody Modifications

Parenting is tough. Now you have to coparent and you don’t have constant access to your children like you used to. You are sad. You are hurt. You are angry. You may even begin to believe that you and your child/ren would be better off without your coparent in the picture.  ’ll work to create a safe place for you to work through these feelings because coparenting is forever. Your child/ren need(s) both of you. It works best if both you and your coparent work together, however, even if you come by yourself, we can work on helping you learn the tools necessary for helping your family transition from one house to two houses. We will work to help you embrace that your child’s life if better if they are allowed to love both parents. It is not the transition from one home to two homes that causes long terms issues and psychological problems for children. It’s the intensity and the duration of fighting between coparents that does not allow children to transition effectively.  If you make the commitment to learning the tools necessary to effectively coparent, your child/ren will be the ones to reap the benefit.