Point of View & Approach:
Today, new and age-old struggles to navigate our lives combine in legitimately novel and often intense ways!
In my role as a therapist, I see that as offering us the invitation to engage in creative, curious, compassionate adaptation and counter-balance, in response.
I’m very glad to do what I do. I see it as a true privilege to talk with clients about their inner and outer worlds, and to help them find more ease in the process of becoming, and the way I work with people reflects that.
No matter what brings someone to therapy, the details of their lived experience are the material. In taking deep, respectful interest in that, we can discover more about what it’s actually like to be you, in your life, and work with barriers of the past, and the current challenges, keeping you from knowing, feeling, choosing and living like yourself.
My counseling approach supports current generations of young people in their progress towards authoring their life;
listening to & hearing themselves, accessing their inner compass & gifts, helping them to grow a sense of agency & confidence.
As your counselor I go beyond “nonjudgmental” to see you and your life in a seriously un-shaming way:
IN YOU I CAN SEE THE ACORN THAT HOLDS THE OAK TREE!
Our work together can make it easier for you to see yourself that way too.
Formal Education and Background:
I hold a Master’s Degree in Counseling Psychology with a focus on Child and Adolescent Treatment, graduating in 2010 from Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon.
In addition to being a Licensed Professional Counselor in the state of Oregon, I am a certified UnShaming Process-Oriented Facilitator, a Nationally Certified Counselor since 2011, and have been providing direct services to young people and families since 2003.
I have a background and Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology, from the University of Oregon which provides a macro-level, systems lens for viewing the counseling process in the wider, societal context; naturally, individual inner therapeutic work is seen as contributing to the cultivation of a more aware and compassionate human society.
As a helping professional, I’ve enjoyed working closely with children, adolescents, teens, emerging and established adults from a diverse variety of backgrounds, communities, and belief systems, and I am adept at walking in many worlds with warmth, friendliness, and authority; my work has been done in private practice, schools, community programs, and the juvenile court system.
I work from a general theory base of Existential Humanistic and Systems Theory; focusing on the dynamics of creativity, mindfulness, and self-awareness within the context of a person’s worldview. I am a practitioner-facilitator that is collaborative, strengths-based, process-oriented; I utilize cognitive, experiential, somatic, creative and relational therapies to encourage clients’ abilities to access, live into and build a life they want to live. Through this process of individualized, relevant, positive and engaging therapy, clients’ self-expression, awareness, understanding, empowerment, strengths and abilities are cultivated and opportunities for growth and healing can be explored and experienced.