My Approach
I apply an integrated approach to counseling that focuses on nurturing your strengths and resources, while teaching skills that cultivate your inherent wisdom. I offer compassionate curiosity that serves as a mirror validating your own truths. This process will assist you in gaining more clarity and kindness. Consequently, you’ll be able to navigate challenging life terrain with more ease and grace. Furthermore, increased self-awareness and acceptance leads to a greater ability to respond with flexibility and choice, rather than reacting unconsciously through stuck fears and limiting beliefs that perpetuate suffering.
We are always in relationship – with ourselves, our environment & with others. Many of us have been deeply conditioned through harmful codependent systems & held down by trauma that restricts the way we relate. I can help break those negative patterns so you can live the life you really deserve: to embrace your true nature of sovereignty.
Our core wounding happens in relationship, therefore healing must also happen in relationship. Our trusting therapeutic relationship we create together is what will facilitate your healing and growth towards living a more fulfilling life. I create a safe space to explore and express through unconditional positive regard and by presently attuning with trust. You’ll gain embodied presence with here and now interventions that drop you from the head down into your heart/body where the true healing happens.
With a foundation of loving-kindness, I focus on what’s right with you, rather than what’s wrong. Through deep listening I witness your authentic self and highest values without judgment. Hence, from this centered place you can align your behavior towards successful outward expression and feel congruent in all your parts.
Most of us have some form of trauma. The good news is that it’s possible to heal when you have support. I can help you update from the old narrative that keeps you trapped, into choosing a reality that includes more satisfaction & freedom. People honestly start to feel better in the first session because they experience the rewards that are directly available by simply showing up with compassion. With genuine care and warmth, I support you to foster more balance and gratitude. Ultimately this will empower your capacity to transform and thrive!
Self Care Tips:
I highly recommend bringing in some daily practices that help you to stay centered and connected to your self, while also offering stabilization, resourcefulness and well-being. There are of course infinite possibilities of what this could look like for what works best for you and it is great to curate your own optimal regimen. The following are my personal failsafes that I try to make space for everyday and I am happy to discuss in more detail:
- Meditation and prayer
- “Energetic hygiene” with “grounding, releasing and recharging”
- Body-based movement practices such as yoga and dance
- Being outside in the natural world
- Cultivating Gratitude as often as possible
* These could all be blended together beautifully and are all essentially geared towards becoming more present and embodied.
* I take insurance through Alma, which includes Aetna, Cigna/Evernorth, Optum, and UnitedHealthCare UHC. For any carrier’s that are out of network, I can provide you with a Superbill to be submitted for reimbursement by your insurance company. If you’re paying out of pocket, I am committed to making therapy accessible & affordable for lower income clients, so please inquire further about workable options for you. Psychotherapy is a financial investment that is ultimately a commitment to your own self healing and growth.
**I cannot see someone for both counseling and massage work, it has to be one or the other. However, because I am professionally trained in therapeutic touch, with informed consent I can bring this into the counseling session if it would be beneficial to the healing process.
***The above approaches can all be synthesized together for a customized session based on your preferences, they do not have to be booked separately.
Therapy can help if you:
- Long for a sense of belonging and connection, but feel isolated, alone and unworthy.
- Feel weighed down with self-doubt or feeling not good enough.
- Wonder whether to stay or go in a relationship.
- Need mediation and support in your relationships.
- Struggle to set healthy boundaries for yourself.
- Tend to sacrifice or betray yourself for others.
- Feel stuck in habits that aren’t serving you due to old wounds that keep you guarded in fear, sadness and/or anger.
- Feel burdened by anxiety, depression or grief.
- Want to feel more alive and fulfilled.
I can help you shed light on and work through what’s been holding you back from actualizing your inherent birthright of integrated health and happiness.
I offer a free 15 minute phone consultation to learn more about you and what you’re seeking in therapy. Take the next step and book today.
~ I’m doing almost all sessions via zoom and find that therapy is just as effective this way, which is great because I can work with anyone in Colorado from a distance. If you prefer to work in person, I would be happy to see you in my Bayfield home office.
~ My practice is well-rounded & informed by being a Massage Therapist, Meditation Instructor, Doula, & a past Instructor in Outdoor Ed & Snowboarding. I am also an Ordained Minister of Walking Prayer: Earth-Based Wisdom Traditions for spiritual guidance, personal growth & plant medicine integration via www.awakenedheartshealingarts.com
Mindfulness-Based Transpersonal Counseling
This one of a kind degree from Naropa is an East meets West approach that offers practices anchored in wisdom traditions that have delivered inner peace for thousands of years. These tried and true methods will result in your ability to move through difficult life issues by helping you access something greater within and beyond the self. Gestalt therapy and Internal Family Systems is used to help integrate your various parts into wholeness. Transpersonal psychology offers a spiritual and holistic approach to counseling, as it addresses who we are beyond the persona.
EMDR Therapy
EMDR is widely researched and evidence-based as a highly effective treatment for PTSD, as well as other psychological disorders. The protocol works to unlock stuck trauma and limiting beliefs by rewiring the neural network in the brain, which assists our own inherent healing capacity towards more adaptive functioning. Our goal here is “to feel at peace with the past, empowered in the present, and able to make choices for the future.” (Shapiro) We do this by stimulating both the left and right hemispheres of the brain to desensitize trauma, while also offering many various resourcing tools that you can utilize in everyday life.
Women’s Work
I absolutely 100% love working with women! I am continuously awed and inspired by the immense resiliency and creativity that I witness everyday with my clients. I believe it is us women who will save the world as we rise up and restore balance to the harmful power structures within our own relationships and larger cultural context. I am passionate about honoring and uplifting the Divine Feminine and being in service to our Mother Earth. Much of this work includes:
- dismantling very old codependent patterns that we’ve been conditioned into and oppressed by, such as taking care of everybody else except ourselves, people pleasing and/or rescuing/enabling.
- becoming empowered by reclaiming who we really are, especially if we carry a “witch wound” within our psyche, DNA, or family lineage.
- learning how to communicate assertively rather than aggressively.
- befriending our emotions as wise teachers rather than repressing them.
- implementing healthy boundaries that help get our needs met while also creating safety, respect and trust in relationship.
Nature-Based Counseling
We all have a felt sense knowing that just being in the natural world is intrinsically therapeutic. Utilizing the inherent metaphor, beauty, and healing capacity of the outdoors can lead to direct experiential insights that leave you feeling connected and embodied. I know I process best when I’m out moving my body in fresh air spaciousness, so why not do therapy that way? Sessions can also include divination, earth medicine tools like feathers, shamanic journeying, questing, ritual, and ceremony – resulting in powerfully meaningful guidance that ripples out to have lasting benefits in your daily lived experience.
Couples Counseling
I’m trained in Pyschobiological Approach to Couple Therapy (PACT), which is an attachment based model that helps promote safety and security for a healthy functioning relationship. I teach communication skills (NVC) and facilitate building trust towards creating a successful “couple bubble”, which is a mutualism that helps bring out the best in one another and makes you stronger together as a team. I encourage leaning into the relationship and its challenges as a way to co-regulate, heal old wounds and embrace co-evolution together. I also draw on other couple modalities such as Emotional Focused Therapy (EFT), the Gottman Method and love languages to help bring research-based support to your partnership, even if it is one of co-parenting and not necessarily romantic in nature.
