“Experience is not what happens to you. It is what you do with what happens to you.” – Aldous Huxley

One of the things that can be frustrating about finding the best therapist for you is that therapists sometimes have difficulty communicating what exactly we do in counseling, and how we do it. If you ask these very reasonable questions, you might get responses like, "Therapy is organic" or "What we do comes out of what you bring to the session." While these statements might be true, they don't really answer the question, do they? Recognizing that therapy is an art, and the process of therapy is unique to each individual, I want to try to answer those questions for you here.

I primarily use narrative therapy, which is based on the assumption that people aren't problems – we have problems, or questions. First, I want to get to know you a bit outside of the concern that brings you to counseling. How do you want to be known? How would your friends describe you? What matters to you? The next thing we do is name the problem or question that brings you to therapy and unpack its influences on your life. How does the problem show up for you? What does it have you doing or feeling or avoiding? How does it affect your sense of yourself? What's your history and relationship with it?

We also look at how cultural expectations help shape the problem. Our feelings about ourselves are often influenced by ideas about who we should be and what our lives should be like. Are expectations involved in the problem? Whose? Where do you think those standards came from, and who benefits from them? What does a certain expectation cost you? How does it benefit you? How does it fit with your values and goals for your life?

After unpacking the problem in various ways, we explore your responses to it so far, and your hopes and dreams for your future. All along the way, you are the one who gets to decide what your experiences mean – what's important and what directions you want to go in.

I take a strengths-based, future-oriented approach, relying on the fact that your current abilities, intentions, and experiences already contain the seeds of new possibilities and actions. Change occurs as we access your capacity for creativity, imagination, and resistance to the problem. We strengthen the narratives that find meaning and purpose in your life experiences, and we develop fresh strategies for meeting challenges, rooted in what you already know and have done.