Services
Providing Everything You Need
Couples
As humans we have an innate need to connect and feel secure with ourselves and others. When we experience distress within our intimate relationships, we feel anxiety, anger, intolerance, defensiveness, or a desire to shut down and withdraw. The wall is up and we get stuck in endless cycles of fight and protest. Due to emotional disconnection, couples drift apart and find it difficult to communicate and stay on the same page. I have a passion to work with couples and help them find the road back to each other. Your communication issues might stem from feelings of not belonging, and not feeling validated and understood. I will facilitate the conversations and help you both experience a new emotional experience by restructuring your relational cycles.
My favored methodology for working with couples is EFT (Emotionally Focused Therapy). I have training in EFT and I am working towards full certification. Emotionally Focused Therapy is an evidence-based modality based on attachment theory. EFT takes couples on this fascinating journey of rediscovering each other and allowing them to make space to be heard and validated. The goal is to build stronger and safer connections by understanding yourself and the other, so a secure attachment is developed to allow vulnerability, curiosity, and openness.
Individuals
It is my firm belief that we all are equipped with the necessary tools to overcome the stressors of life. I work with my clients to evoke their natural gifts and internal resources to help them navigate life in healthier ways. I believe that we are part of a larger system, which includes family, work, friends, and culture. We were not born to be an island, and any time we find it difficult to reconcile all the different aspects of these environments it can cause trouble in our relationships, affecting our self-esteem, creating conflict, and interfering in the way we view life, the way we bond, and communicate with the ones we love. I am here for you! I favor a collaborative approach, where I will walk with you to co-explore and co-create your life story to help you develop new interpretations of life. I tend to favor modalities such as IFS (Internal Family Systems), Narrative Therapy, Collaborative Therapy, Experiential, EFIT (Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy and aspects of CBT. Throughout the process of individual therapy, I am open to an integrative approach that will fit the clients’ needs.
Families
Our families are our first experience with the world around us. It is a living organism that allows us to experience love, acceptance, warmth, safe physical touch, care, and it also helps us to develop a healthy view of self that will sustain us through life. At the same time, humans are complex and intricate, making connections often complicated and challenging. It is important to also notice that we all have different temperaments and different ways to express and receive love. Within the family system each person will enact their personality traits, act upon their own view of the world, and interact in ways that can be uplifting or wounding. As imperfect beings, throughout this multitude of relational cycles, we hurt others, we detach, we experience miscommunications, we engage in not so healthy behaviors that end up affecting the entire family system. As a result, connections are ruptured, and people lose a sense of emotional safety. In response to that lack of emotional security ones will relentlessly pursue others to make sure they are still connected and safe. Others will withdraw and detach as a way of protecting themselves from further hurt. That is where I come in. I help families establish safe connections again, where people will be able to turn towards each other and become responsive and emotionally engaged. Just like my work with couples, I see relational cycles through the lens of attachment and I intentionally work with each family member to help them organize their emotions, make sense of them, and start helping them to restructure the relational cycle to create a safe foundation for connections.
Faith Based
I will incorporate your belief system into your treatment plan if that is important for you. I am a Christian therapist, but under no circumstance do you have to be a Christian to work with me. I do believe that God is our ultimate safe attachment and even though we face issues within relationships, and some of us might have experienced wounding events in our lives, God is with us (Emmanuel).
