Individual, Relationship, and Family Counseling
Healing the body, mind, spirit, and heart
“Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.”
— Pema Chödrön
Working with a therapist heals…
Through research in neuroscience, we know that talk therapy not only helps us to feel better but it also has the power to change neural pathways in the brain responsible for mood, motivation, and even our thoughts about ourselves and others. Talk therapy for 6 months or more has been proven to strengthen healthy brain connections, reduce symptoms, and maintain mental wellness even years later. Working with a therapist can heal emotional wounds and create a sense of wholeness and balance in life. Sacred Connections works with individuals with the following challenges:
Depression, loneliness, and feeling stuck
Chronic stress, anxiety, and anger
Grief, loss, as well as childhood and adult trauma
Life transitions and relationship challenges
Counseling for better connection to ourselves and to others
Individuals
We learn about ourselves through others. Esther Perel, a renown couples psychologist, says, “The quality of our lives depends on the quality of our relationships.” One of the most common reasons to seek counseling is to improve one’s relationships - friendships, romantic relationships, with your spouse, parents, adult children, or even work relationships. Whether you are single and dating, in a committed relationship or marriage, or you are finding yourself ready to start again, counseling can help you with self compassion and understanding your relationship patterns in order to improve the quality of your life. My overarching intention as a therapist is to bring my clients closer to the people in their life - the ones they already know and the ones they have yet to meet. Knowing and trusting yourself is the first step to enduring, joyful connection.
“We can only love others as much as we love ourselves.” ~Brené Brown
Couples and Relationships
As with most of life, there is an ebb and flow in all relationships. There are times it feels easy and carefree, and there are other times that leave you wondering if you’ll ever feel as connected as you used to. When there is undo stress in our home and work lives, as there is right now, it absolutely affects how we feel about ourselves and how we feel about our partners. If there are two people that are committed to each other, everything else can be learned. Couples therapy can help you learn about yourself, each other, and the origins of how each person shows up in the relationship. There are also foundational skills that can help every relationship work through disagreements, conflict, and maladaptive patterns better. Couple counseling can change the trajectory of the relationship in a way that brings fulfillment and wellbeing to both individuals.
Families and Groups
Families are like branches on a tree, we grow in different directions yet our roots remain one. There are many types of families from the traditional nuclear and extended or origin family, single parent families, blended, in-law and grandparent families and more. Sacred Connections defines family as two or more adults or children who are connected by their past (such as a person’s origin family) or currently living in the same home. Not only are there many types of families, there are also numerous transitions and complexities within a family lifecycle, just as there are with us individually. Each of us is growing in who we are and naturally the growth of each person in a family can cause the family system to need tending to in order for each person to feel seen and connected. This is especially true when children transition into adolescence. Having a peaceful, connected, and joyful family life is the foundation of wellbeing for adults, adolescents and children. Counseling can help.
The healing power of counseling
There are universal experiences that can cause us to question everything we have learned about who we are within ourselves and in connection to others. It’s in these times it can be difficult to meet life on life’s terms; when looking on the bright side, persistence and grit no longer get us through the day.
Talking with someone who can deeply listen to our stories with warmth, compassion, and insight into who we are, our strengths and our challenges, can not only help us understand ourselves at a deeper level, but also create new pathways in our brain that lead toward equanimity, peace, resilience and meaningful connection. In this way, committing to working through the stories of our hearts can be the most important self care that not only heals ourselves, but heals our relationships and all those around us. Healing our relationship to ourselves and with those who’ve impacted us has the power to bring us closer to our true selves.
Our emotions such as sadness, anxiety, grief, worry, anger, the spectrum of feelings, are universal experiences. Yet we can start to believe that we are alone, that we did something wrong to feel this way or that there’s something broken inside, but these beliefs are simply not true. There isn’t anything more universally binding between us than our feelings. In fact, the more we try to deny our emotions, the harder everything in life gets. Defending against ourselves and others can only last for so long and only serves to increase the tensions of life. Counseling not only brings awareness of the origins of our emotions, but also increases our knowledge, understanding, and wisdom about who we are in order to listen closely to our internal voice as a bridge to our intuition and highest selves, our purpose.
"There's no way around grief and loss: you can dodge all you want, but sooner or later you just have to go into it, through it, and, hopefully, come out the other side."
—Johnny Cash
“When you find peace within yourself, you become the kind of person who can live at peace with others.”
— Peace Pilgrim