Individual Therapy

Does your mind sometimes feel like a scary neighborhood where you don’t want to go alone?

Meeting with a good therapist helps you to befriend your mind and learn to understand the habitual patterns and maladaptive coping mechanisms that keep you from feeling at home with yourself.

Often, the scary neighborhood – anxiety, depressed mood, addiction, or over-consumption – are actually “check engine” lights telling you that something in your life desperately needs attention.

Together, we will turn toward these symptoms with curiosity and kindness – instead of trying to get rid of them, we will listen deeply and figure out what they are trying to say.

Turn toward pain with kindness.

Paradoxically, once you stop trying to run away from pain and turn toward it with an open heart, you can begin to understand what pain is telling you. Your mind is not a scary neighborhood – it is your best friend and desperately needs your attention and friendship.

And, of course, your body feels every thought you think.

Often, when we don’t know how to turn toward ourselves with kindness and learn to process and integrate what is calling for attention, our bodies become symptomatic – our bodies keep the score. I can help you learn to turn toward yourself.

It is hard to do this alone.

Effective therapy is about helping you listen deeply, trust what emerges, and tell yourself the truth.

It takes courage, determination, and kindness to recognize and attend to the wounded, scared and maladapted child within you.

It is not uncommon to find that these wounded and maladapted parts of ourselves are running our lives without our conscious awareness.

But often, the parts of yourself that cause you the most trouble were at one time actually trying to protect you.

We do not try to get rid of them; instead, we learn to hold them in the arms of compassion. Then let them know that a wise, kind adult self is now behind the wheel.

Before you can be truly present for another, you must learn to be truly present for yourself.

Presence is not a state of being but a moment-by-moment practice of mindful awareness. The deep intimacy with yourself that you learn to cultivate in individual therapy transforms not only your relationship with yourself, but also your relationship with all the people in your life and the world in which you live.

Call me at (941) 404-6355 for a free 20-minute consultation, and I’ll help you get started.