Individual and Couples Therapy

Do you have a complaint about your life that you’ve tried to change but cannot? Working with a skilled professional can help you bring about the change you want to make.

counselor and therapist in portlans, portland psychotherapy servicesINDIVIDUAL PSYCHOTHERAPY

We work collaboratively to identify your priorities and therapy goals. We also leave room for curiosity about thoughts and feelings that surface spontaneously or from imagination, dreams, and daydreams.

I encourage you to say whatever is on your mind. I teach people how to really listen and sit with uncomfortable feelings and use them as guides for deeper self-understanding and acceptance. It may be that the deeper pain for us is about how hard we’ve worked to avoid feeling.

We can learn to accept and integrate the different parts of ourselves, even those parts we’ve put into hiding out of guilt or shame. Opening space for all of these parts is what helps people heal.

We may explore your early history to better understand how you’ve learned to cope with adversity. Although these ways of coping may have served you in the past, you may find that they are keeping you stuck now. Meeting at least once a week can help you make the most of therapy. We talk about how things are going for you in therapy. The moment to moment experience between therapist and patient can create a learning lab for understanding current and past relationships.

 

couples counselor and therapist in portlandCOUPLES THERAPY

Let’s look at what’s really going on in your relationship.

Our partners can provide us with a mirror for looking at ourselves. Sometimes it’s hard to see what’s in the mirror, and it takes courage to look at your reflection.

My work helps couples to feel more open and receptive, to listen and communicate their needs with one another, and to work toward overcoming obstacles to intimacy. I want to help you increase your communication, connections, and feelings of closeness and love.

I draw upon psychoanalytic couples’ work and couple’s communication research to provide you with an understanding of your relationship dynamics as well as to develop new tools, and practice putting new learning into action.