Therapeutic Support for a Life of Healing and Connection

Providing in-person support in San Diego and virtual support throughout California

Welcome….

It is hard to be human, isn’t it? Living this life, with our limited time and resources, with our overwhelmed nervous systems and with stress coursing through our bodies—it takes its toll. In the midst of our challenges—anxieties, loss, addiction, trauma—we do our very best to make sense of our experiences and ease our experience of suffering. For many of us, we eventually realize that what we’ve been doing to survive is no longer working for the lives of connection and enjoyment we actually want. We’ve thought our way through every problem and still find ourselves stuck.

We need a bigger change. We need support to move away from unhelpful patterns and experiences to live in ways that feel safe, secure, maybe even enjoyable. We’re not looking for a quick fix, but the deep and long work of self-knowledge, self-regulation, settling into a life of goodness.

Therapy can be that place of time, space and support to explore, deepen, know and heal yourself. It’s a place to practice new skills, new ways of thinking and being, where you can heal old wounds and develop healthier patterns and more capacity for connection. Within the therapeutic relationship, you’ll access your innate resilience to the suffering and emotional distress you’re carrying, so that you can have a life that feels good.

“The spontaneous movement in all of us is toward connection, health and aliveness, no matter how withdrawn and isolated we have become, or how serious the trauma we have experienced. On the deepest level, just as a plant spontaneously moves toward sunlight, there is in each of us an impulse moving toward connection and healing.”

-Dr. Laurence Heller, PhD, Healing Developmental Trauma

Bring your body along in the healing

More than talk therapy….

Deeper healing doesn’t stop at insight, it involves your body in the process. We are not disembodied brains navigating our worlds, and our brains—thank goodness for them!—can only take us so far. Our bodies are deeply involved and deeply important to our experience of and relationship to ourselves. Our bodies are the container that hold us from our first breath to our last, the place that holds (and feels) fear, anxiety, sadness, joy; it’s the source of energy and movement, and our first response and protector against any threat we encounter.

Many of us haven’t had the time, space, or support for our bodies in processing all that we experience. We have to carry on, and we use our brains to push through any uncomfortable sensations our bodies give us as information. We try to make logical connections and move about our lives with a list of things to do and change and fix. Meanwhile, our bodies get stuck in nervous system rhythms of over-activation (think: panic, anger, that pesky restless leg, sleep disturbances, dysregulation, and more), or shut down (think: numbing out, depression, being frozen). We need support to gradually restore healthy nervous system rhythms. When our nervous system is regulated, when we feel safe, our lives feel better. We feel ease, expansion, aliveness, connection. The juiciness of life—right there with you!

The work of therapy includes this: insight from your body and your mind. Transformation from the bottom up. Learn more about this approach here.

For Support With…

  • General Support

    Sometimes we have the sense that we just need some support or a witness to our experiences and development—no significant mental health challenges to address or treat, just a desire to be seen and walked alongside as we explore and come into relationship with previously unknown parts of ourselves. This exploration can be necessary, exciting, life-giving, while also being scary, disorienting or anxiety-inducing. It can be helpful to have someone create a safe-enough environment to do this deeper exploration, to support when things feel overwhelming, and to encourage and challenge us— our thoughts and our behaviors— in necessary ways.

  • Trauma

    If you are suffering from unresolved experiences that still feel very present—whether relational, physical, medical or otherwise—healing and relief from distress is possible. Your trauma may have happened young, through consistent experiences of neglect or misattunement; we call this developmental trauma. Or, it may have been acute—a one time event with lasting impact. Either way, trauma doesn’t need to be a life sentence. I utilize an approach called Somatic Experiencing for the treatment of trauma and trauma symptoms. While this healing work is slow and takes time, we will tap into your innate resilience and work with your mind AND your body to resolve the residual effects of trauma to help you feel and be present and safe in your current life. Resolving trauma helps to restore natural and healthy rhythms of energy, rest, connection and vitality in your life.

  • Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

    OCD is considered one of the most debilitating and misunderstood mental health issues, even amongst professionals. Media frequently get OCD wrong, only adding to the stigma and challenge of overcoming it. Obsessive and intrusive thoughts can be distressing, scary, and out of alignment with our values. When you add compulsions to the mix, the cycle can hijack your life. If you think you may be suffering with OCD, talking to an OCD specialist about your symptoms can help with diagnosis. Diagnosis and understanding of how OCD works makes treating it much more possible. If OCD is something you suffer with, focused treatment utilizing Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) can help.

  • Relationship Stress and Attachment

    Relationships with family, partners, children and friends are some of our most vulnerable places. We long for connection and understanding, but find ourselves in cycles of disconnection, misunderstanding and conflict. These cycles often have their origins long before the relationship we find ourselves in today. Our early experiences create a template for how we engage in relationships throughout our lives. For some of us, this is great news! For others, we find it difficult to get and stay connected in healthy ways because our early patterning didn’t quite set us up for success. We can work with our attachment systems to regain a sense of safety and security in connection.

  • Grief and Loss

    “Grief offers a wild alchemy that transmutes suffering into fertile ground.” —The Wild Edge of Sorrow, Francis Weller

    Grief is a universal experience, impacting every person at some point in their lives. Though grief and loss are expected, they are often unwelcome, bringing profound emotional distress as we learn to navigate a new life without. There is no way to sidestep the pain of the grieving process, however moving through the process with support makes all the difference. We need certain types of support—conditions for grieving—to help us not just “get through” our sorrow, but learn from it, to bring us to a place of more aliveness.

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