Therapy & Counseling
In my experience, people seek out therapy or counseling for many different reasons. Often relationship or intimacy issues, or painful life events. Sometimes it is a desire, or an ache, for something more in life or a feeling that something isn't right.
Life can be difficult and it is a natural impulse to avoid painful feelings or find ways to get rid of them altogether. Yet distancing ourselves from our authentic experience often comes at a cost. Living with that cost, I believe, is what brings many people to therapy.
William Faulkner writes, “The past is never dead. It's not even past; it's always part of the present.” One way to understand Faulkner’s words is to see that the pains of our past live in our unconscious and shape our inner world. In other words, when we don’t deal with our problems, patterns, and secrets, they don’t simply disappear. They go to the basement, work out, and get stronger.
We humans are fortunate, however, because over time we can grow psychologically and emotionally. Because we are shaped in relationship, it is often through relationship that growth and change take place.
Speaking openly while being listened to by another who is deeply attentive can help us make sense of our experiences, integrate difficult feelings, and work through longstanding difficulties. Exploring these difficulties takes courage, but it can also be among the most meaningful and rewarding work we undertake. Real change is possible.
I work with people experiencing depression, anxiety, relationship issues, hopelessness, sexual problems, mood disorders, confusion, addiction, and many other forms of distress. This list is purposefully incomplete but hopefully gives you ideas of different symptoms that one might bring to therapy to be talked about, explored, and worked with over time.
Research consistently shows that developing a good relationship with a therapist is one of the most important elements of effective treatment; if not the most important. For this reason, I find setting up an initial phone call to hear one another can often be a useful way to begin.
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PCLC is a designation for Professional Counselor Licensure Candidate. This means that I am licensed in the state of Montana as a psychotherapist under supervision. This requires a Master’s Level education, a specified amount of supervised clinical hours, passing a licensure exam, and continuing education and training as psychotherapist.
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Psychotherapy is a specific type of therapy that involves working with the psyche, meaning our mind, thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and beliefs. It’s a term that designates this type of therapy aside from other therapies, i.e. physical therapy or speech therapy.
In this this type of work, therapy is a process where therapist and patient commit to a consistent time and space to think and feel together. It is collaborative work in which the patient and therapist explore the patient’s internal world of emotions, beliefs, and experiences that shape who they are and how they interact in the world.
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While I am a therapist, first and foremost I am human, navigating the journey of life, just like you. As such I have been in my own regular therapy work so I am able to better walk with patients through their own growth process.
I welcome each patients story, personality parts, and experiences no matter how difficult. We are complex and nuanced people.
Ultimately, my hope is that each patient comes to meet themselves, others, and the world with greater sincerity and freedom.
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Broadly speaking, I find psychodynamic frameworks most helpful as they create space for the unconscious.
More specifically, I am informed by Object Relations, a psychoanalytic tradition that understands psychological development through relationships.
British Object Relations proposes that our early experiences of connection, and the absence of connection, shape our inner world and continue to influence how we experience ourselves, others, and our relationships.
As a clinician drawn to British Object Relations, I am an active member of the Center for Objections (COR), as well as the Northwest Alliance for Psychoanalytic Study (the Alliance).