Therapeutic Approach

Helpful Conversations

At the most basic level, I view therapy as a helpful conversation.  During these conversations, I will listen, think, and inquire from a place of empathic curiosity.  If we work together, I will check regularly with you that you are experiencing our conversations as helpful, and I will do my best to understand and be accountable to whatever effects our conversations are having in your life.

Navigating Relationships with Stories

When life is challenging and painful, it is easy to feel like we must be the problem.  My working assumption is that problems are not located inside people — for example, in a flawed “self” or “personality.”  Instead, I assume that problems are linked to stories that have been dominant in our lives, but which are failing in crucial ways to represent what really matters to us.  

If we work together, I will help you identify the dominant stories that have helped sustain the problems you are wanting to address.  We can then examine how these stories have affected you and how they originally took hold in your life.  These inquiries often reveal the ways in which dominant stories are tied to abusive and unjust uses of power.  Standing outside of dominant stories makes it possible to reclaim the ability to choose how we wish to understand ourselves and make meaning of our lives.

In addition to helping you step back from dominant narratives, I will help you identify ways that you have already departed from them.  We can then understand together how those exceptional moments are grounded in values, relationships, and experiences that are precious to you.  These understandings can be developed into alternative stories that open new possibilities for who to be and how to move through life.

Buddhist Mind Training Practices

When they are of interest to the people I work with, I draw upon mind training practices from Asian Buddhist traditions.  Such practices include mindfulness meditation, present moment awareness in everyday life, and the intentional cultivation of compassion for oneself and others.  These practices teach us to how be present with painful emotions -- our own and others' -- without pushing them away or becoming overwhelmed.  

Healing Through Relationship

Harm is often caused through relationships, and healing can occur through relationships as well.  The quality of my relationships with the people who consult me is deeply important to me.  Honoring relationships includes practicing accountability, transparency, and mutual vulnerability.  Meaningful relationships shape the lives of everyone involved.  If we work together, I will offer to share with you how our work is showing up in my life in ways that are meaningful to me, while always keeping your life and concerns at the center of our conversations.