Brian

I offer trauma-informed therapy for adult individuals and couples, ages 18 – 55.

Individual therapy

A common reason an individual person is coming to see me is because they want help being more authentic, more connected to other people, feeling more emotionally balanced, &/or addressing something unresolved from their past.

Maybe you’ve finally found people in your life that you can trust, however you struggle to get to a place where the relationships really flourish. You worry about losing them and sometimes feel lonely or separate from other people. You want to feel closer, but you’re lost about how to achieve that. Maybe even, you’ve had some successes in life & earned the respect of others: in your career, hobbies, or other relationships – but you still get trapped in the same disconnection in some personal relationships, and it just doesn’t make sense to you. 

You might also be noticing that a sense of inner pressure or heaviness is growing more intense – & you are becoming more easily overwhelmed than you usually are. Your normal coping of just trying to push through and handle it all is clearly not working. You might be isolating more frequently from friends/family, becoming agitated at small things, &/or struggling to focus on work, or school like you need to. 

This growing sense of loneliness & self sufficiency might even be familiar to how you grew up with your family. And your whole life, it’s been super important to break this family cycle of disconnection. As much as you cared about your parents, you saw how miserable they were and said you wouldn’t go down the same path. But sometimes you can see those familiar family patterns of relating to people showing up in your own relationships, in spite of your best efforts to change that. And you get the sense that there’s still more to sort out and understand about your early experiences and how they really impacted you. 

Furthermore, if you’ve added children to your family, you sometimes feel a concern that they will struggle through life like you have or your bond with them will get fractured — and you long to have a really strong bond with them. 

You’re ready to try something different! Ready to feel more at peace with yourself, more connected to others, & to get out of survival mode. 

Would you like some help in getting there?

Couples therapy

When I work with couples, they often are committed to the relationship but are missing that sense of deep connection & “we-ness” — & both people are longing to find more of that togetherness with each other.

If this speaks to you, maybe you used to have a solid connection with your person, but find that these days, you are feeling really stuck! Issues impacting the relationship get swept under the rug. Or, the way you both argue is exhausting — it spirals with each of you repeating your familiar positions & neither of you are feeling heard. 

You and your partner might even recognize that you keep having the “same fight” over and over again; & you know that both of you play some part in this dance of disconnection, but are lost about how to create a new dance together. 

And it all leaves you feeling desperate to be able to resolve these issues. You want for each of you to own your part in the disconnection, so that you can:

– have conversations about how to feel closer to each other, 
– rebuild trust through repairing fresh & old hurts,
– hold fears together, 
– and regain that sense of partnership & playfulness that you used to have

You want to feel like your special person has your back & will be there for you when you need them; and also that they feel secure to turn to you as well.  

Do you want to take your relationship to a new level of connection?

How I help

You might benefit from Emotionally Focused Therapy, a humanistic type of therapy that helps people to increase awareness about their relational patterns and find balance in connecting deeper with their emotions. This approach draws from the science of attachment & bonding to help people better understand themselves, their emotions, and their connections.

Together, we can create a safe relationship where you can explore the things that are bothering you both past and present.

I can help you clarify stuck patterns in your life. And over time, find more and more relief from the stuckness – feeling the balance & connection you are craving. 

Of course, people are diverse and so I always look to find what approach fits for each individual person. The beginning 3-4 sessions help us do that & find the direction to go in together. I strive to create an inviting & open atmosphere, where we can address issues at your pace.

It’s also very important to me that people can show up fully as themselves with me, which is why I am curious about diversity & celebrate it! The world is a much better place when we can make room for our differences.

Over time as we work together, we get to the deeper roots of what is causing this stuckness and that creates a path for connection, healing, & generally more flexibility in life.

We can start to move through emotions — instead of being overwhelmed by them, or running from them, hoping they just go away.

When this happens, people often talk about feeling emotionally “lighter” – feeling more confidence in both themselves, and their bonds with others.

Reach out to me if any of what I have mentioned sounds like it could be helpful to you. I’d love to get to know you more and see if you’d enjoy working with me!
I offer a free 25 minute introduction to help us see if we would like to schedule a first visit.