Perhaps you have a life-changing decision to make or you feel “blue,” listless, weary or dissatisfied.  Many people choose therapy because they want to “fix” their difficulties, and believe that may be accomplished in a few consultative sessions.  Such quick fixes do happen for some.  Yet most people find therapy offers a safe environment for exploring deeply felt and long-held issues that manifest themselves in the emotions that drew them to seek therapy.  Over time they grow to understand that emotions inform us.  What we do with that information can propel change.

Ready to make a change?

Choosing a therapist is not simply an intellectual decision.  You truly must “click” with your therapist for the relationship to work.  That’s why I offer a free consultation for potential clients. 

As a therapist, my goal is to support and assist my clients as they become the persons they are meant to be.  I use a collaborative approach to help them learn to understand their emotions.  Together we work to resolve the issues that interfere with their lives.  I want to help you through this process too.  Contact me for a free consultation.

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If you are a couple seeking therapy, you may:

• Be at an impasse in your relationship,
• Want to see if your relationship is “worth saving,” and/or
• Want to develop new skills to deepen your existing relationship.

I will help you identify problems and provide opportunities for deepening your relationship.  Our work will focus on what you think is right between the two of you… and what’s not.  I teach couples to hear and understand each other.  I will help you recognize that very often it’s communication that’s the problem.  Together we will identify negative communication patterns and change them into new, healing, healthy, connections.  Once couples reconnect, partners feel safe enough to be vulnerable to the other again.  That is truly when relationship growth happens.

Couples often come to me for short-term counseling – somewhere between 8 to 20 sessions.  Afterward, couples who desire deeper, more rewarding partnerships continue their work with me.  Others choose regular “tune-up” sessions.  How long our work lasts is entirely up to each couple. There is one other option, Marathon Couples Therapy, that is described below.

1. the importance of awareness, acceptance, and understanding of your(?) emotions;
2. the visceral experience of emotions in therapy; and
3. the importance of changing emotions in promoting psychotherapeutic change.

In couples counseling, The Gottman Method and EFT dovetail beautifully. I guide couples to this intersection in order to teach them new skills that help deepen their relationships.

“There can be no knowledge without emotion. We may be aware of a truth, yet until we have felt
its force, it is not ours. To the cognition of the brain must be added the experience of the soul.”

—Arnold Bennett

• You are ready to dive in and make lasting, positive changes in your relationship.
• You are in distress or crisis and unsure of the path forward, but know it can’t stay how it is now. 
• You feel stuck in a negative cycle and want the fighting to stop. 
• You’ve become distant–like roommates–and don’t know how to be close again. 
• Weekly counseling isn’t working with your schedules or the childcare shuffle. 
• You already see a therapist, and weekly sessions aren’t working out. 
• If you want to get away from it all AND rebuild your relationship. 

• There is a current ongoing affair.
• One or both partners has an active addiction that they are not ready to address.
• One partner is committed to ending the relationship (discernment counseling might be a better option).
• There is chronic intimate partner violence or abuse (couples counseling is not recommended, but individual therapy for each of you definitely IS).

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When acting as a Life Coach, I help you address specific life challenges.  But if you’re looking to explore your life more deeply, or if you are ready to explore your inner world then we can transition to psychotherapy, which is longer-term and often is covered by insurance.

If after eight weeks you are still looking for Life Coaching, we can continue in that vein.  For example, if you feel you’d like to look at other aspects of your life that we didn’t explore (like work or family), we can examine those next.  But if you’re looking to explore more deeply the aspects of your life that are anxiety, unhappiness, or if you want to explore your past – in other words, if you are ready to explore your inner world – then we can transition to psychotherapy, which is longer-term and is often covered by insurance.

How it Works

Coaching sessions are one hour in length, except for the first session, which might last up to two hours.  After the first session, we meet once per week, with four sessions in the first month.  They are conducted remotely at this time.  Emails, phone calls, and texts in between sessions that are less than ten minutes are included in the hourly fee.

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I am an out-of-network provider and will provide you with a bill that you can submit to your insurance company.

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I was married, widowed in my forties, and in my fifties found love again with my new husband.  In between I was a mother of two kids who now are adults. When my first husband died I retooled, returning to school and then working while raising my children. These experiences taught me that life goes on whether one is prepared or not.

I have learned that it is best to be prepared in all aspects of our lives. I believe that the here and now is the most important thing in the world. Sometimes, though, our past gets in the way of our here and now. Therapy has the power to intervene to relegate the past to the past and firmly establish you in the present, so that you are able to enjoy your life now.

I also have a special interest in sexual issues in committed relationships and work with couples to help them get them where they want to be. I work to establish effective communication, help couples remember (or discover) why they chose each other in the first place, and help them create a resilience in the relationship that will last.

Accreditations

• Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC)
• Master in Psychology, Seattle University
• BA in Psychology from the University of Washington
• Certified in Theme Centered Interaction: a holistic group paradigm based upon structure, process, & trust
• Trained as a hospice volunteer
• Humanistic therapist, educated within existential-phenomenological psychology

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