Contemplative Counseling and Psychotherapy

Contemplative psychotherapy is a combination of Western psychotherapy and counseling traditions with Eastern awareness practices. My practice combines elements of existential/humanistic, family systems and eastern approaches to mental health.  It assumes that people are inherently wise and healthy.  They develop, grow and seek to understand and find solutions to life’s problems. Rather than focus solely on pathology, or disorder, this approach honors inherent wisdom and sanity.

Mindfulness-Based Therapy

In mindfulness-based therapy, meditation and mindfulness techniques are taught and practiced in session and as an adjunct to therapy.  These increase acceptance of thoughts and feelings while softening judgmental, critical, and rigid patterns.   The process has many fruits: relaxation, insight, increased awareness, values clarification, confidence, and establishing a sense of being engaged in moment-to-moment life. Mindfulness techniques help one connect with their most authentic, aware, and awake self.  

Family (Systems) Therapy

Family therapy, also known as family systems therapy, is commonly used in the United States and in many parts of the world.  It began 50 years ago and has its origin in general systems theory.  Systems theory suggests that to know oneself deeply we must understand the important relationships within ourselves, with others, and with our world. We need to know the context of our lives to make changes. 

In family therapy we curiously unpack and kindly examine relationship systems and patterns.  This supportive and accepting examination includes current relationships, but often the relationships and way of relating we were raised within our family of origin.  It includes dealing with negative stuck patterns, but also our positive strengths and inherent wisdom. Couples, marriage and family therapists engage every combination of family relationship (immediate family, extended family, blended family, couples, or individual members) to assist a family to function in more comfortable and useful ways.  It might include supporting the following:

• Family transitions: marriage, couples becoming new parents, children leaving home, caring for aging parents, etc.
• managing interdependence and differentiation (i.e., being yourself in relationship).
• clarifying conflicting family rules, roles and expectations
• patterns of managing and resolving conflict
• success with blending families
• marriage counseling and relationship repair
• better emotional connection between and among family members.
• improving habits of communication and understanding
• assertiveness: authentic communication instead of passive or agressive.

Existential/ Humanistic Approaches

Existential approaches suggest that along with the desirable aspects of life we also have challenges as a result of being human: disease, aging, loss, anxiety, experiences of aloneness and meaninglessness. Often surface problems manifest as a result of how we relate to essential existential dilemmas. Humanistic approaches hold a positive and hopeful view of people and how they deal with these problems. It acknowledges that people have the “capacity to become aware, free, responsible, life-affirming and trustworthy…” It “…emphasizes the independent dignity and worth of human beings and their conscious capacity to develop personal competence and self respect….” and also emphasizes “the importance of courageously learning to take responsibility for oneself as one confronts personal transitions” (From the Association of Humanistic Psychology).