Therapy
Therapy is a collaboration to explore how your experiences have informed your sense of self and your relationships.
Relational Psychotherapy
Relational psychotherapy is a specific kind of talk therapy. I think of relational psychotherapy as focusing on two main components: the insights from exploring the content you bring in, and the relationship we create as a therapist and client.
In order to gain insights, I’ll want to explore your experience of attachments and relationships in your life. We can also spend time being curious about the patterns that show up in the ways you relate to yourself and to others. I will want to know about your early relationships, and what happened in your younger life. We will seek out how you learned to be connected or disconnected in relationships. In this work, we will discover your operating principles (assumptions and beliefs you hold based on your life experiences) and how they bring your past experiences into your present.
In our sessions together, we will also build a way of relating to each other. This will give you an opportunity to integrate the insights you discover, and to create a space where you can experience something different in relationships. Our relationship can act as a testing ground to see what kinds of changes may be possible in your interpersonal world.
Epicormic Growth
Epicormic Growth is the growth that happens in response to damage or stress for a tree. Buds sit beneath the bark of trees, sprouting into branches in order to survive difficult circumstances. Leaves grow to catch the nourishment from the sun.
Having worked in wilderness therapy, and as an arborist, I find we can look to nature for metaphor in our own lives. We all have buds of resilience within us ready to grow when we need them. The growth that happens after we experience wounding or stress can feel out of place or like the whole shape of who we are has changed.
Therapy can be a place where this growth happens, or a place to explore what new parts of ourselves have grown into existence. We can be curious about what parts are nourishing us, and what new parts might be best to prune in order to thrive.
