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As a therapist in private practice in Portland, I often meet clients who, despite their obvious intelligence, were unable to resolve the personal difficulties with which they first present themselves to me.
Sometimes when I first meet a therapy client, I may be moved to say something like, “Given your obvious intelligence and all of your thinking about this problem, if you haven’t yet figured it out, maybe you’ve been searching in the wrong place.”
By this I mean that thinking alone will not solve many of the personal problems which clients bring to therapy. Similarly, as many persons have discovered, talk therapy alone often is insufficient for working through many of our therapy issues.
How an experiential therapy approach differs...
Many of the issues we face are not mental puzzles awaiting the mind to solve them like a computer. We are persons with mental, emotional, body (and if you will, spiritual) dimensions of experience. From moment to moment, our lives unfold like a stream or process through mental, emotional, and sensory lived experience.
But sometimes our unfolding gets stuck. We have difficult, painful, and even traumatic experiences whose significance to our lives we cannot "digest" or integrate. These experiences get stuck within us like boulders obstructing and diverting the flow of our life experience.
Again and again, as a therapist I witness how our painful experiences become frozen within us as erroneous and unproductive attitudes and habits of thought, stuck feelings, and chronic muscular tensions.
The experiential approach to therapy
When I work as a therapist with a client, I work to restore my client's life process by using therapeutic methods which guide him/her from the ivory tower of the mind into the flow of lived experience. In presence, a client learns to experience issues in ways which unfreeze blocked feelings, chronic muscular tensions, and unproductive attudes and habits of thinking.
Given the many dimensions of human experience and given I work as a process-oriented therapist, I must be capable of tracking a client's experience as it moves through mental, emotional, somatic, or spiritual dimensions of experience. Therefore I am trained in a variety of therapy modalities including:
- Mind/Body (Somatic) therapy - which integrates, talk, experiencing, emotions, and the body.
- Focusing- which is a way of "listening" to ourselves in presence which helps to unblock process.
- Authenticity / Existential therapy - which fosters your taking your place in your life as the unique being you are who is responsible for your existence and its fulfillment.
- Transpersonal (Spiritual)- which cultivates presence which allows you to experience without being overwhelmed.
You can learn more about each of these therapy approaches by exploring the menu selections at the top of the page.
My experience is that my clients may not be able to change their pasts, but they can "digest" and make meaning of their experience in ways which unblock their aliveness, and allow greater personal fulfillment.
Feel welcome to a free consultation
If you are interested in exploring an experiential approach to therapy, perhaps the first step is to book a complimentary consultation. Personal therapy is a transformative relationship shared by two persons. So, it is important that you take the time to check out therapist with whom you might work. Is the chemistry right for you? Does the therapist's background and abilities meet your needs? Would a referral be appropriate?
How do you arrange a consultation?
The easiest way to arrange a consultation is to use the "Online Appointment Booking" link at the top of the page. There you can book a consultation (or any appointment) at a day and time of your convenience. Of course this can be done by phone (503.226.2771) or email, but my busy practice may result in my not replying to you in a timely manner.