Psychotherapy.
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” (C. Jung)
My Approach:
I believe that all people have an innate healing capacity and through compassion, we can navigate to the other side of shame. I have worked extensively with issues of childhood and adult traumas and how these painful experiences have affected how we relate to ourselves and others. Sometimes, we can feel stuck or lost in our lives, perhaps struggling with anxiety, depression, relationship difficulties, or even just a sense of deadness. Sometimes, there are big issues to grapple with. But our experience of breaking open and apart does not have to be just an injury to survive, it can be the ground for something new. Therapy can help loosen the process of growth & the experience of being present to our own life.
With awareness and sensitivity to both personal and cultural forces, I strive first and foremost to create a safe, welcoming space for you to explore all aspects and parts of yourself. I am flexible to what you personally need, constructing therapy based on what works to relieve suffering, develop insight, and foster growth. That said, work with me tends to be more experiential than cognitive. The foundation of my approach is fostering mindful awareness and integrating somatic approaches and guided imagery. In a paced and gradual way, we will focus on uncovering and processing wounds by integrating depth work and mind-body based approaches for exploring your self (“parts work”) and facilitating somatic safety and release, but we might also use self-compassion approaches, behavioral techniques, or other modalities. Because healing does not happen in a vacuum, over time we may explore multiple pathways of healing beyond one-on-one talk therapy by including interpersonal or community integration, connection with nature and spirituality, and holistic approaches. I am especially passionate about working with people who are open and willing to do deep work. I also enjoy working with those who are interested in using therapy to explore topics such as having a life of meaning, creativity, and psychospiritual development. My style is warm, non-judgmental, attachment-oriented, and trauma-informed. To me, healing is not fixing, it’s holding.
Individual Therapy For Adults
Speciality Areas.
Adjustment Life TransitionsAnger Management Men’s Issues Anxiety Moral Injury & MilitaryAttachment Issues Post-Psychedelic IntegrationCareer Counseling PTSD and TraumaCoping Skills Relationship IssuesDepression Self-Esteem & IdentityGrief and Loss SpiritualityLife Transitions Women's Issues Treatment Approaches.
Acceptance and Commitment TherapyAttachment-BasedCognitive Processing TherapyCulturally SensitiveDialectical Behavior TherapyExistentialMindfulness-Based InterventionsParts Work ("Internal Family Systems")Person-CenteredSomatic ExperiencingTrauma FocusedFor those seeking post- psychedelic integration:
HOW DO INTEGRATION SESSIONS HELP ME?
“There’s only a fraction of a psychedelic experience that we can bring back into our waking state consciousness, and into our lives… we’re going to the waterfall with thimbles.” -Jamie Wheal (4/25/19)
Psychedelic medicines are powerful agents for evoking peak experiences, life-altering insights, and sometimes spiritual crises. Much of the transformative potential experience, however, is dependent on how one integrates them into daily life. It is my belief that psychedelic medicines are merely a catalyst, and it is the person’s psyche-body-spirit that does the work of change. Therefore, in the days, weeks, months, and years after the journey, it is the psyche-body-spirit that must continue to do the work of change. Psychedelic integration is thus about helping you bridge the highly (and the seemingly insignificant) significant experiences you have in non-ordinary states of consciousness with changes in your behavior, ways of thinking and perceiving, personality style, emotional patterns, relationships, as well as your values and worldview. Integration can be about re-orienting, reprogramming, de-conditioning, re-calibrating, and re-wiring. In short, psychedelic integration is a practice of harvesting the fruits of psychedelic experiences for the sake of your holistic betterment.
MY BACKGROUND AND APPROACH
I follow a harm reduction philosophy when it comes to treatment goals and honor that although I have professional training, my clients are the experts on their lived experiences. I have completed Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP) training from Polaris Insight Center and Sage Integrative Health, the MAPS MDMA-Assisted Therapy Training Program, and participate in ongoing experiential KAP clinician groups to work with my own non-ordinary states of consciousness. My work delivering KAP in my private practice and at Sage Integrative Health continue to deepen my experience providing post-psychedelic integration to people. Additionally, I am being trained as a psilocybin therapist for the upcoming UCSD phantom limb pain clinical trial.
My harm reduction approach includes education and resource information; exploring potential risks and benefits of altered states of consciousness; set, setting, and safety planning; setting intention; access to supportive local community resources.
During post-psychedelic integration sessions, I work with clients to gain meaning and growth following invigorating, challenging, or disorienting psychedelic experiences. I appreciate and respect the use of psychedelics for inspiring transformation in oneself and one’s world. I also recognize that numerous non-psychedelic therapy modalities and non-ordinary states of consciousness can lead to life-altering revelations. I, therefore, offer mindfulness-based practices and welcome creative expression, mind-body awareness, and spiritual exploration into my work with clients. I view my role as a collaborator on my clients’ healing journeys and greatly value the opportunity to offer support as life stories evolve including addressing existential and psycho-spiritual issues. My approach to integration is rooted in curiosity, exploration, and discovery.
*Please note that I do not condone the use of illicit substances outside of legally sanctioned and ethically responsible research studies or cultural ceremonies. I do not refer clients to sources for obtaining illicit substances.
What is trauma?
The current psychiatric diagnostic manual conceptualizes psychological trauma as a life-threatening event such as seeing someone badly injured or killed, thinking you might be badly injured or killed, or being harassed or assaulted or witnessing someone else harassed or assaulted. This can take many forms such as sexual or physical harassment or assault, a car or motorcycle accident, experiencing a natural disaster, or specific military experiences (e.g., combat service, a training injury, or military sexual trauma). Importantly, this particular conceptualization also excludes many critical traumatic experiences including emotional abuse and neglect, moral injury stemming from our actions or inactions, betrayal and institutional trauma, racial and/or discrimination-related trauma, collective trauma, and intergenerational trauma. After a trauma, there are many traumatic stress reactions that can happen including but certainly not limited to PTSD, depression, anxiety, low self-esteem or worth, perfectionism, substance misuse, and perpetual difficulties with relationships or emotion regulation. This is because trauma changes the way we think about ourselves, other people, and the world. It changes how our nervous system responds to both banal day-to-day occurrences and more challenging stressors. Trauma impacts what we do with our lives, the places we go or don’t, and what type of people we connect with or not. There are always both post-traumatic growth and stress responses within an individual. Therapy can help by offering a safe relational vessel to explore, uncover, and process how our experiences have impacted us, and ultimately be one of the contexts through which we make meaning, re-conceptualize, and integrate all our experiences and parts into a whole Self.