My Brand of Counseling

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1.  You don't have to appologize for anything, unless you are intentionally trying to hurt me.

What do you suppose your brain hears when you apologize 10 times per day?  I believe it hears that you are making a lot of mistakes.  What about 50 times per day?  I believe that it hears that you aren't very good at adulting.  This tends to leave you with feelings doubting your abilities as a human being.  This is something that I would like to limit to the greatest extent possible.

2.  We don't Judge anything.

When we look back at a memory, decision, or maybe a feeling, with information that we currently have, that we didn't have in the past, we beat ourselves up for not making a different decision, action, or feeling.  I believe that we do the very best we can with the tools that we have at the time.  Repeated mental beatings become a habit, which again creates cycle of beating ourselves up.  This is also something I think should be limited.

3.  I don't like the word try.

When we use the word try, there is an implied threshold for success that we must cross or else we feel like a failure.  I prefer the use of practice or working on.  This insinuates that we are moving closer to where we want to be, instead of an all or nothing attempt at a skill which we haven't completely developed and in some cases have never used before.

4.  We can talk about anything.

In counseling we tend to talk about a lot of things.  Sometimes we talk about really uncomfortable things that we have been avoiding for a really long time.  Until we make them overt we may never address the. things that may be contributing to the current feelings that are limiting our abilities to enjoy life, or our inability to perceive our worth.  I want my clients to feel safe talking to me about anything (which may be new and uncomfortable). 

Many of the trauma that we experience happens while we are in relationships.  How we interact with people around us often has a significant impact on our levels of functioning and our happiness.  It is extremely important to be authentic to yourself before you can be authentic to/with anyone else.  In order to be authentic to yourself, you need to have been able to feel safe enough to be yourself without a fear of ridicule or retribution.  My goal is to create a safe container for you to be able to be you.  Once you develop your identity/sense of self, then you can begin to show up as yourself in your relationships.

I believe that it is impossible to be you, if you are not giving yourself permission to feel your feelings.  Your feelings guide you, by communicating to your conscious brain what is ok and what is not ok, what you like or what you don't like, ultimately what is acceptable and what is not acceptable.  Frequently our conscious brain veto's or overrules our feelings because of fear that being "you" may not be acceptable to other people around you.  If this is the case, you attempt to become what you believe is acceptable to others, and "Mask".

It is impossible to set healthy boundaries with others, if you are not authentically you.

In my opinion, many times we look for ways to not feel (or numb out).  Whether that is through drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, sex, pornography, shopping, gambling, eating, not eating, overworking, video games, social media, reckless (sometimes dangerous) activities, binge watching (YouTube, videos, or television), or anything else that might allow you to distract yourself from a feeling, I call numbing.  When we habitually numb instead of coping (defined as dealing "EFFECTIVELY" with something difficult), I believe that we create addiction.  In my opinion, if we can address the reason that we numb, then the addiction begins to lose its grip on us. 

Believing in something is very important to recovery.  Whether it is the universe, luck, Nature, God, Buda, Allah, Yahweh, Brahman (not an all inclusive list), directs our morals, which is what we believe is the difference between right and wrong; and our values, the things that we believe are important.  These become our compass in life, and are instrumental in finding happiness.