How I Work As a Therapist
I believe we all story our lives against the backdrop of our personal discourse, family discourse, and societal discourse. Some of the stories we identify with have been beneficial yet others have been less helpful or even hinder us to reach the happiness and contentment we seek. I work from a strengths-based approach working collaboratively with clients to re-author their stories and strive for the positive changes they are seeking.
Change is often nonlinear and happens once we've let go and exhausted all the possible ways that we can hang on to the way things were. This means meeting clients at their current state of change and helping them cultivate the space for positive growth to happen.
I mostly work with individuals and couples, roughly 60/40 percent respectively. While I have certain clinical areas of focus that I enjoy, I very much like being a “generalist.” Being in private practice I get the privilege of working with a wide variety of clients, presenting concerns, age groups, and demographics. As a therapist I feel this keeps me engaged in a full range of clinic work and “the human experience.” Almost all of my clients are adults 18+ and I work with clients across the lifecycle. Some clients I see for a few sessions and others I have been working with for several years.
Becoming a therapist
In my early forties I was in need of a career change and decided to pursue becoming a therapist as a great way to help others and combine my interests in psychology and creative problem solving. Prior to going back to school to become a therapist I was a ceramic artist for twenty years. Coming to therapy as a second career in mid life was beneficial for me in having enthusiasm for learning something new as well as having some life experience to draw on.
I first became interested in therapy after going through a divorce in my early thirties and was curious to what got me to this point in life and my relationship. I had attended both relational and individual therapy and found it both helpful and interesting as a career field. I think part of what makes for a good therapist is being both curious about others and caring about those around you and towards yourself. I taught in higher ed for eight years and realized I enjoyed being in the role of helping others learn and helping my students succeed which are characteristics I bring to my work now as well.
I grew up in the Pacific Northwest and have lived in Eugene since 1998. Living in Eugene affords me the ability to access many of the things I enjoy; the outdoors, an active community, the vibrancy of a college town, and a sense of community that comes with a smaller city.