find your direction and purpose
Existential Exploration
Life events, transitions, Decisions...
Do you wake up feeling like you live in someone else’s movie playing a role that is not you? Have you lost your sense of meaning, purpose and direction in life? In a supposedly multi-cultural world, do you still feel like you have to pick “sides” or apologize for who you are? Do you suffer anxiety and isolation pretending to be who you are not?
I work with individuals to help them identify and understand what shapes their identity.
I’m particularly attuned to the helplessness, frustration and anxiety that can accompany living with multiple and intersecting identities that may including culture, race, sexual preference and illness.
I can help you process life transitions, by choice or imposition, intergenerational trauma, internalized oppression and social injustice to facilitate your healing and liberation.
Freedom and Responsibility
Find acceptance and serenity in discovery that we can choose how to react or act.
self-awareness
Inaction is a decision. Expand awareness through acceptance of what we can and cannot control.
Relatedness
We are wired to connect with others. Building healthy relationships is key to integrated identity.
Search for Meaning
Explore values and discover realistic values that reflect your authentic self.
Reconnect to Self, Purpose and Meaning
Types of Therapy Used to Help You
Existential Therapy
As a philosophy major and former practicing attorney, I am very much drawn to the existential approach to resolving issues particularly with respect to identity conflicts which have meaning, purpose and anxiety at their core. Basically, existential psychotherapy focuses on searching for the value and meaning of life. This may sound a little high brow to you, but you can probably relate if you’ve ever experienced dread contemplating your purpose in life, who you are and what you’re “supposed” to be doing. Yes it’s deep. It goes beyond learning some skills to get through your day. It’s about waking up to the real “you.” Your authentic self.
I will teach you how to confront fear and anxiety so that it doesn’t overwhelm you or direct your life. In our work together we will explore the “self,” your core values and what really makes you tick. Consistent with existential therapy, you can grow to realize that you are not a victim of circumstance. You can choose who you want to be. With the responsibility for your own actions and choices comes empowerment.
cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
The process of becoming often entails exploration of your underlying values which may prompt your disguarding old values for new meaningful values that reflect the authentic you who is not trying to fill a role set by another. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy or CBT, as it is widely known, is a structured therapy that helps change the thinking patterns that keep individuals in self-defeating behaviors.
In treatment, you will learn how to identify, analyze and change the thinking patterns and behavior that keep you out of your authentic self and create distress. This results in being able to have more control and meaning in your life.
“Success is not final. failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts.”
— Winston Churchill
Good life is more than avoidance of suffering
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is an evidence-based treatment developed by Steven Hayes, Ph.D, that helps clients learn to accept their emotional experience, and commit to action that improves and enriches their life. It teaches mindfulness skills and helps identify what is important and meaningful to inspire and motivate change. Rather than focus on changing the content of distorted thought, as is done in CBT, ACT focuses more on how an individual might relate to the thought and other private experiences such as memories, feelings and physical sensations. ACT therapy prompts the question, what do you want your life to be about?
