For Individuals
LIVING IN RELATIONSHIPS
Negotiating a raise, setting limits with children, planning time with extended family, sharing domestic responsibilities with your partner -- it’s all about shaping and steering relationships. When you become present, truthful and intentional in your most important relationships, the positive effects cascade. Strong relationships lead to not only better mental and emotional health, but greater professional satisfaction, improved physical health/longevity and enhanced well-being in every area of life.
CREATING NEW RELATIONSHIPS
Worn out and frustrated in your search for a partner? Confused about what healthy love looks and feels like? You aren’t alone. Dating and relationship-building can be brutal, and confusing or unspoken “rules” about how to progress in a new relationship so often get in the way of building a joyful and trusting connection with a new person. Creating a healthy, long-lasting love relationships in this environment requires a well-defined vision of yourself as a partner, how to you want to be and feel in a relationship, and the courage to bring that to your dating life.
Shaping YOUR OWN Attachment STYLE
Do you long for closeness but fear rejection, and nervously strategize about how to get your needs met? Or, do you hold yourself at arms’ length from others, push away bad feelings, and never really feel known? Often these strategies help us feel more in control, but seem to push our partners away or upset them. Therapy can help you understand your particular attachment style better, honor your innate need for intimacy and safety, and try new “moves” so that you can be close with less pain and confusion.
FIGHTING PERFECTIONISM WITH PRESENCE & ACCEPTANCE
Frantically completing a never-ending checklist that you believe, once finished, will bring you status and happiness? Believing that once you get “there,” you’ll finally feel good, or at least ok? If you’re living for some theoretical future, you may feel empty, disengaged and disconnected more than you’d like. Therapy can help you learn to show up better in your life now, make better choices about how you spend your time, energy and money, and help you live and work with more joy and presence.
Body Acceptance and Disordered Eating/Cyclical Dieting
I provide a safe, evidence-informed space for my clients to heal from disordered eating and/or a conflicted relationship with their bodies. I specialize in treating people who are suffering from the insidious emotional, mental, and physical harms of intentional weight loss from an Intuitive Eating (IE) and Health at Every Size (HAES) approach. I espouse a weight- and food- neutral position (no foods are bad, all body sizes are good) and compassionately support all of my clients wherever they are in their recovery.
For Couples
I practice Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFTc), which focuses on calming conflict, deepening the emotional and sexual bond between partners, and establishing the type of trust, connection and love that can go the distance.
Emotional Connection
Feeling misunderstood, blamed or unloved by your partner is one of the worst feelings there is. You may respond with anger (nagging, criticizing or attacking) or by shutting down and withdrawing. Either way, you end up alone and this is a terrible experience for both of you. Stopping this pattern and establishing a strong foundation of trust, understanding, closeness and connection is possible.
Giving, Receiving and Negotiating
Are you resentful about all you do for your relationship? Do you wish your partner recognized how much you give and how much more you need? Do you find yourself complaining, withholding or retreating in resignation because you don’t know what else to do? Therapy can help you learn to confidently take credit for your hard work while making specific and understandable requests to your partner that set the stage for meaningful negotiation.
Accountability without Shame
It can be really hard to look at yourself and admit that you’ve hurt your partner, whether it’s a single instance or over time. It can be even harder to admit this to your partner for fear of an avalanche of “I told you so’s” or recrimination. One of my favorite things to do is help people hold themselves accountable without going to a shameful place that they feel they can’t get out of. In fact, being accountable and knowing how to truly apologize for the way we have hurt others is the antidote to shame and self-blame.
Recovery from Affairs and other Relationship Traumas
When your partner violates your trust, it can feel as if you’ve lost everything. As if the rug’s been swept out from under you and the story of your past, present and future is completely unreliable. Couples often break up when affairs or other relationship traumas occur, but sometimes couples want to do the very hard work of healing and there’s no better place do to this than in couples therapy.
Early Relationship/Pre-Marital Work
Want to tackle minor differences before they become big rifts? Want to assess whether you’re addressing important issues before making a long-term commitment? Early relationship couples therapy is one of the best ways to prevent cycles of conflict from grabbing hold of your relationship when times get tough. Identify your weak or “raw spots” now and plan for how you’ll respond when they get tested in the relationship.