Your story, as a young adult or growing adult, matters. Your story is personal and holds your truth. As your therapist specializing in working with adults with PTSD, complex ptsd, and childhood trauma. I am here to give you the voice you deserve. Your worth and happiness lies beyond fear, feeling powerless, and confused. As an adult, your fears may cause you to feel judged, excluded, or hurt – closing you off from the world. I guide you to a place where you are seen and understood, so you can feel accepted and loved. Together, we can challenge those harmful thought patterns and help you truly feel good about yourself and your life.
What can clients expect to take away from sessions with you?
My main goal is to get to know you better. I may ask you follow up questions that you filled out from your intake form. I also will be inviting you to ask me questions to determine if we’re a good fit to work together. I will be talking about how I incorporate feedback informed treatment where we check in after 3 sessions and your welcome to provide feedback of what’s working for you in therapy and what may have not been helpful for you so I can learn your style better. The more you tell me about you, the more I learn and make therapy approaches more suitable for you. I won’t know unless you tell me how you feel about therapy. You can be honest with me. I can take it. I would rather you tell me what I’m doing wrong so that I can do a better job at serving you. Otherwise you’re more than likely going to drop out of therapy. Together, we will identify your challenges and goals - where you want your life to be a month, six months, a year from now. Then, we'll identify options and strategies you can use to get there. You'll leave the session with a better understanding of what you're facing with an "actions I can take right now" approach. There will always be room for suggestions concerning our work together, including keeping each other accountable.
Explain to clients what areas you feel are your biggest strengths.
Imagine me as your personal chef. My goal is to get your needs met in therapy. I want to provide you with a meal that tastes delicious. If it’s not delicious even if I feel like it could be, you’re not going to want to tell me that it’s not delicious. You may clam up and pretend to like it or not show up for upcoming sessions. You may not have been in the mood for that dish even if it worked for you 3 months ago. I want to learn more about the reasoning behind that particular foods not working for you. Whether something we did in therapy didn’t feel good to you or I rubbed you the wrong way in what I said, me knowing how you feel is crucial for the therapeutic relationship to thrive. The more you feel comfortable sharing, the faster you’re going to heal and get the most out of therapy. You may have worked with therapists in the past who have invalidated you. You may have dropped out of therapy because of feeling dismissed and unheard of how the therapist responded to your situation. I want to understand more about how you truly feel about our therapy together. In order to help you get you to a better place in 6 months to 1 year from now I need to know what’s working for you and what’s not working for you. You’ll probably hear me ask you “How was session for you today? (at the end of our conversation to check in). Having an open and honest relationship with you is a core value in my practice. I understand it can take time to build a trusting relationship with a helping professional. It’s especially difficult to trust people if you’ve been through betrayal trauma in therapy from the past. I’m happy to start where you are because you’re truly the expert of your own life. I want to cater to your needs and desires to help you along your journey.
Describe the client(s) you are best positioned to serve.
My dream clients would be folks that are committed to healing and need a safe space to process their childhood traumas. My dream client hasn’t cried because of not feeling safe or has been told by therapists, parents, extended relatives to “suck it up” “stop crying” “your being to sensitive.” They have been emotionally neglected. My dream clients have parents that don’t understand them and ostracize them for being “different” or “not good enough in their parents eyes.” My dream clients are creative and see the world through a lens that people don’t take the time to understand. My dream clients are trauma survivors of any kind who are just realizing that they have trauma or flashbacks that have surfaced in their lives. My dream clients are in their late 20’s, 30’s, 40’s, and 50’s. They have been through sexual, physical, emotional, and narcissistic abuse or toxic relationships from their family members, partners, siblings, betrayed by their best friends in some way or feel left out from the group. My dream clients could come from the streets to the farms, from affluent families (aka all walks of life). My dream clients may identify as Gay, Bisexual, Lesbian, or straight. They have complex trauma and people please, flee during conflict, struggle with boundaries, and have a push pull relationship with their parents. My dream clients are the “black sheep of the family.” They have been disowned, put in foster care as a child, or severely abused. One parent may have loved and protected my dream client while the other one was jealous and acted controlling and mean hearted. Also, I don’t work well with folks who expect and demand that processing involves structure. I’m fluid meaning anything mentioned by you or what you want to talk about is what we speak about in session. You’re the expert of your life. If you need to write stuff down during the week before therapy by all means do it. I don’t have an agenda on what we discuss. I’m your guide to get you to where you want to be going while your the expert of your life and what feels appropriate for you to talk about on that day.