Services
About My Clients
One thing that a lot of my clients have in common is a harsh inner critic. This critic can affect your self-esteem, cause anxiety or depression or both, or hold you back from pursuing your dreams. I look at the inner critic is as a part of you. I want to make space for other parts of you that aren't as dominant so that you can thrive. I also connect well with people who have experienced childhood emotional neglect, meaning that it was difficult to form a solid trusting bond with your caregivers.
My Background and Approach
I place great emphasis on the client-therapist relationship, as I believe it often parallels your experiences in real life. With compassion and curiosity I use a logical approach to help you meet your soul’s needs and live your favorite life. In terms of psychological approaches, I identify as a Gestalt therapist first and foremost. Gestalt focuses on awareness in the here and now. Out of this awareness emerge sensations, thoughts and feelings which need to be experienced, digested and integrated into the whole of one’s being. Sometimes integration means not digesting a particular byte of information. Accepting this refusal can also contribute to greater wholeness. You learn to be and accept who you are, with your likes and dislikes, preferences and resistances. Lately I have also been dabbling in IFS (Internal Family Systems). In IFS, we look behind your internal protectors and managers at the hurt and vulnerable parts behind them.
My Values as a Therapist
As a psychotherapist working with shame, self-esteem and the inner critic, I like to focus more on making use of your choices when you uncover that you are already good enough and less on healing your so-called broken parts. Together we can explore the masks you wear to hide the parts of yourself you consider too shameful to share with others, the striving to be something you are not or don’t even want to be, the unrealistic expectations you may place on yourself and others. I propose that being comfortable in your own skin, whether you are alone or with others, is better than perfection. Psychotherapy can help shed those uncomfortable skins and masks that are borne from shame and may no longer serve you. Those that do serve you we can keep but let’s be choiceful about that process. One topic that’s really important to me as a therapist and as a human is oppression and privilege. I spend a lot of time thinking and raising awareness about racism, sexism, heterosexism, transphobia, etc.