Grow Therapy Home
Tristan Cook, LPCC - California Therapist at Grow Therapy

Tristan Cook

Tristan Cook

(he/him)

LPCC
10 years of experience
Warm
Challenging
Humorous
Virtual
In-person
431 30th Street...

Welcome! Take a seat wherever. Many of use feel like we suffer in silence with feelings or reactions we didn't want nor asked for. Whether its a constant, nagging tightness in your chest when around other people or the desire to move and fidget becomes to overwhelming to ignore. Sometimes we can feel very "stuck" or trapped with these feelings where we see no escape. Fortunately, there are different ways of seeing, interacting, or being that can alleviate that suffering and help you live the life you want to live.

What can clients expect to take away from sessions with you?

In our first session together we will engage in a few tasks. 1) Establish trust and rapport. Together we build a foundation of trust and respect that fosters a warm, caring, and encouraging environment. 2) History Taking. We explore background and relevant information to create a complete picture of you and your life while also examining what brought you into therapy and how it is affecting your life or well-being. 3) Assessments. This process may be formal, such as a questionnaire, or informal through conversation that seeks to establish a baseline of functioning and help formulate the presence of a clinical diagnosis. 4) Establishing Goals and Objectives. If time permits we may begin the process of identifying goals for treatment that are collaborative and client-centered. What change would you like to see? What does that look like? How might we measure it? 5) Closing Ritual/Action. Often I like to have a specific ritual or action that we do to end our time together. This can be something as simple as the ringing of a bell or a guided visualization. Most importantly, it is created collaboratively between me and you.

Explain to clients what areas you feel are your biggest strengths.

The alliance between the therapist and the client is of utmost importance. As a result I've worked hard to foster an environment that is safe, comfortable, understanding, and transparent whereby I can challenge and encouraged in equal measure and attune to new perspectives. Therapy is uniquely tailored to each individual but the foundation of the therapeutic relationship remains the same. Through the relationship, I can validated, encourage, reflect, offer guidance or skills, or utilize a variety of other approaches. When appropriate and if the alliance is sufficiently strong, Ketamine-Assisted Therapy and Psilocybin-Assisted Therapy may be used to create and access a therapeutic window where we can begin to discard old negative patterns and beliefs systems and replace them with more resilient and adaptive ones.

About Tristan Cook

Identifies as

Specializes in

Serves ages

Licensed in

Accepts

Address

431 30th Street, Oakland, CA, USA, #140A

Appointments

Free consults, virtual & in-person

My treatment methods

EMDR

I've been utilizing EMDR to support clients with backgrounds of both single event and chronic traumas. EMDR, or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, is primarily a trauma-focused therapy but can also be used to address anxiety, depression, and a host of other diagnoses. In EMDR sessions, we focus on traumatic events and their associated content to slowly and methodically reduce the impact of negative events on overall functioning. We work to make new meanings and perspectives from the event to finally free yourself from the pain and disorientation of negative life events. EMDR is also used as a modality in psychedelic-assisted therapy sessions.

Narrative

"By the time we are born, we already have a story," writes therapist Esther Perel. Sometimes in these stories we may see ourselves as "unlovable," "a headcase," "lazy," or a host of other negative evaluations. Narrative Therapy seeks to breakdown and examine these stories we tell ourselves to separate who we are from what assaults us, and in doing so, find and inhabit new "stories" for ourselves. Through the story framework, narrative therapy externalizes and deconstructs the problem and helps us to choose new behaviors and thought patterns. Similarly, Narrative Exposure Therapy is a brief intervention where the client and therapist collaborate to create a visual narrative, where repetition helps to diminish and minimize reactions to painful life events. Narrative Therapy is also used as a modality in psychedelic-assisted therapy sessions.

Acceptance and commitment (ACT)

Often the way that we avoid difficult thoughts and feelings becomes the problem itself. ACT teaches us to accept the range of our emotions and use our values as a guide to pursue the life we want without avoidance. ACT will teach you to "unhook" from unhelpful thoughts, use your personal values to guide preferred behavior, and mindfully accept life without avoiding difficulty. ACT is also used as a modality in psychedelic-assisted therapy sessions.