I think it's brave. I think it's brave that you get up in the morning when your heart aches and life is messy and you do not feel like being soft for the world. I think it is brave that you continue to love, and express, and open your soul, despite the way you were treated in the past. I think it is brave that you keep going, that you keeping believing in something more, something bigger, even when you may not know what you are hoping for. I think it is brave that you fight. I think it is brave that you choose, every single day, to move forward--because that is what makes you strong. ​That is what makes you strong." --bianca sparacino

You are so damn brave. 

I know that often and perhaps increasingly the hole seems endless. 

I know that that you might scoff at the notion that you are even a tiny bit brave.

AND being here, reading this, considering help, wanting something different is brave. 

You are brave.

And that bravery does not mean that you have to feel this way forever.

I want to give you some tools that can help.

I am invested first in not necessarily making things better (because let's be real, if it was that easy, you would have already done that) but finding immediate ways to make the depression and hopelessness a little less worse.

Generally clients who come to me with depression and hopelessness are in crisis and have been suffering and drowning for quite a while before they found the reserve to reach out.

Our first order of business then is to create a little more space and a little more tolerability in your life.

I want to shore up your reserve and your resilience immediately so that the suffering can be a little less loud. 

And with that reserve and resilience can come the space and the capacity to do some of the bigger and deeper work.

I'm not here to silver line your suffering or give you crappy strategies that don't address the real here-and-now crisis that is affecting your every minute.

I know that one of the things that both creates and exacerbates depression & hopelessness is how goddam lonely it is.

You don't have to be alone in it anymore.

We can build some tools to both address the immediate crisis at its root.

We can build some tools so that you can have more choices in how you live.

You get to have a different life.

I'm here to help.

How does it work?

I start individual sessions with an assessment about where you’re at: what’s working, what’s not?  What do you long for?  How would we know if you got it?
 
This assessment is an active accountability document for both of us.  I use them to make sure that we are developing the tools to get you what you want.

We will refer back to your assessment both to check in about how we’re doing and also to better understand how far you’ve come. And this document can and will likely change as you heal and have attainable visions of your life that you could have never imagined before.
 
From there, our time is spent in a variety of ways. 

Often we will start the session with a practice that helps you develop your ability to identify and notice the nuances of your bodily sensations. 

We might work some boundary setting skills and delve into how your individual nervous system responds to triggers and how you can use your sensations to recover before you act after that trigger. 

There are often many of my ridiculous, occasionally brilliant metaphors.  We might have a larger verbal check-in about a relationship and what you want to practice differently in it and make a plan for sessions to develop that muscle memory. 

We might break down how ableism is impacting your self-worth and develop a kinesthetic forgiveness practice. 

We might practice identifying the loudest sensations that are accompanying your anxiety and learning how to titrate in and out so we don’t overwhelm your nervous system and you can still learn to feel into the sensations of anxiety in order to move & change them.
 
My sessions are generally emergent and largely guided by you. 

If you're into it, I love giving homework because it gives you scaffolding to develop the muscle memory that new patterns require and also the ability to take what you are learning directly into your life.

schedule my free 20-minute phone consultation now