Individual Therapy

I’m afraid it’s more than just a question of willpower.

But you probably already know that, don’t you?

It’s totally normal to feel like you have a conflict between different parts of yourself. This conflict doesn’t make you a crazy person.

But it does get in the way of finding genuine and lasting change.

When people get into conflict, they tend to move in more extreme directions – to polarize further. They don’t find a solution, and peace only comes when one destroys another. And the same is true of our inner lives – when we find ourselves in conflict, we tend to pick a side and try to bolster it up until we can stamp the other side out.

But here’s a dose of reality for you: this never works out in the end. All this white-knuckling and mustering of willpower just makes you feel less integrated, more disjointed, more confused about who is the real you.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not trying to smear willpower and motivation. They have their place. But there’s something else we need here. A missing link. A mediator can bring the players in this conflict to the conference table and work out an agreement. And that’s where I step in (spoiler: the mediator isn’t me).

I can help you make sense of all of this.

As a therapist, I want to help you understand what is going on “under the hood.”

I’ve found time and time again that when my clients commit to understanding their complex interior lives, they discover an internal strength, a sense of hope, a renewed confidence that they can take on any challenge that comes their way. Suddenly, they knew how to navigate the challenges that had them stumped.

You see, I believe that each person has, deep inside of themselves, the resources that they need to navigate all of life’s difficulties. My goal as your therapist is to help you learn how to tap into and develop that pool of resources so that it can be there for you whenever you need it. Then you can discover that the mediator you’ve always needed is yourself.

Much of my work as a therapist is informed by an approach to treatment called Internal Family Systems. Just like a family has many members, and the members sometimes get into conflict, each individual has different parts, facets of their personality, or sets of thoughts and feelings. These different parts can get into conflict and cause a lot of turbulence. But when we can identify them and clarify the conflict, we can really work on finding a new peace and harmony in our internal experience.

When you sit down with me for a session, we will focus on the thoughts, feelings, and emotions closest to the surface for you. Our goal is to be open and honest about everything going on inside. Sometimes, we don’t like things inside us, so we ignore those things. But I’m here to help you find the courage to face everything – the good, the bad, and the ugly – so that we can make change where change is needed.