“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside of you”
-Maya Angelou
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Am I the therapist for you?
My goal is to provide a safe space for people to be vulnerable that is free of judgement. Whether you need to process what is going on in your life at the moment, peel back the layers to dive into your past, or work on developing skills for the future, we can do this together.
Whatever your background and/or beliefs, I’m probably an ally. I strive to abstain from judgment and embrace inclusivity. I have always been passionate about being racially and culturally sensitive and inclusive, I’m LGBTQ+ affirming, and social injustice gets on my last nerve.
I strive to meet you where you are and go from there. I have always loved learning, but in doing this job, I’ve had to accept that there will never be a time when I know enough to help ALL THE PEOPLE. With that, if I find that I’m not able to “meet you where you are,” I try to learn more- whether it’s about your culture, your mental health concern, and/or the best way to treat that concern. If we end up not being the right match, I will help you find someone who is better equipped.
My style is conversational; now mix that with
a little ADHD, add a sprinkle of dry humor,
and a lot of empathy, and we have a session!
Many people come with adverse life experiences, disturbing memories, and/or extensive trauma, and they trust me to help them when they share these experiences. I wanted to be able to offer them an approach that has been proven to relieve the symptoms and longterm affects of these negative experiences, so I trained in Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR) from the EMDR Institute.
Your Experiences Matter!
Everyone’s life experiences are valid. Just because you know someone who may have had horrible things happen to them/him/her, doesn’t mean that your experiences aren’t worth exploring, and perhaps reprocessing. While EMDR was originally developed to help Vietnam Vets reprocess their trauma, it has evolved to be effective in reprocessing almost any negative belief about oneself that may have been instilled by a negative experience, usually in childhood.
Examples
One of my clients would be considered a very “successful” person, but never felt good enough. We went back to the earliest memory of when she didn’t feel good enough and reprocessed her experiences from there. This has improved her self-confidence, her ability to set boundaries, and her overall self-concept.
Another client experienced abuse pretty much his whole life, and one of the results of this was the harboring of the belief that everything bad that happens is his fault. We went back to the earliest memory of him being made to feel that everything is his fault and reprocessed memories from there. For the sake of transparency, this work can take weeks or months to get through all of the traumatic memories, but if the client is open to the reprocessing and is patient, reprocessing can happen. His knee-jerk reaction to recoiling when something bad happens as if it is his fault, and the feeling of walking on eggshells, which he wasn’t aware of until the process began, subsided.