Where are you located?
I am in the West Seattle area:
5400 California Ave. SW, Suite C
Seattle, WA 98136
Look for a blue two-story building (with signage for West Seattle Mortgage or West Seattle Attorney). To get to my office you’ll need to use one of the two entrances at either end of the building because they will lead you upstairs to Suite C. (Avoid using the central doorway on the first floor since it won’t give you a route to the upstairs).
When you arrive, make yourself comfortable in the waiting room and please feel free to help yourself to tea or water.
What is therapy?
Therapy is an intentional place for you to be seen and heard. In the stories we’ll walk through together, we’ll likely discover that patterns that have worked for you in the past worked for a valid reason. We’ll find those reasons and do healing work around them. With this, we’ll find new options for relating. There is something trying to work itself out here, and together, through your stories, our curiosity and honesty, and with commitment, we’ll find out just what is needed to live happily again.
What type of therapy do you do?
Good question! It’s important that you know what influences me and informs my work with you.
A simplified way to think of it is that some therapies focus primarily on behavior or thoughts and offer solutions and skills to assist you in changing that particular behavior or those thoughts.
Other therapies known as depth therapies are more concerned with factors like motivations, intentions, identity, developmental arrests – which are the internal experiences that keep us from living more freely in our lives today. This is where I focus our work together.
How does it work?
Through our recurring weekly sessions we build a deeply reflective relationship that differs from a social relationship. What happens in your life ‘out there’ will also happen ‘in here’ in our relationship. This means, the way that you relate to others will show up in our relating to each other and we get to stop and wonder what is happening in your thoughts, responses and feelings as it is happening. This is where your deeper motivations are discovered and possibility for healing emerges.
To do this, we also work with your feelings. This is a part of therapy which often carries a stigma because our society privileges our intellect over our affect. Yet we feel things before we think things. It’s so valuable to gain insights into the feelings that drive our thoughts and actions! These are the keys we will use to unlocking greater awareness about you and your pain and struggles which will lead us to find healing, find more of you, and find new direction.
What is your rate? What forms of payment do you accept?
My rate is $150 per 50-minute session.
I invoice monthly and accept payment using cash, check or the SquareCash app.
The how and why of monthly psychotherapy billing…
Because this payment model best supports our mutual commitment to your true and lasting results, clients pay for all sessions in the month at the beginning of the last session in a month. (We pay at the beginning so all sessions can end on a therapeutic note).
Payment is due for all sessions in the month at that time. Since a time commitment is made to you and held exclusively for you each week, cancellations are subject to full charge.
In the case of cancellation, all efforts are made to reschedule and uphold the weekly commitment. Sometimes this means twice in one week to make up for a missed week. There is not a cancellation timeframe or fee.
Do you take medical insurance?
If your insurance allows you to go out-of-network for services, then counseling services will likely be covered by your provider at an out-of-network rate. Although I don’t bill the insurance companies, insurance can be used by you – about half of my clients get reimbursed from their out of network mental health benefits!
How do I schedule an appointment?
Call me! If I am in session, make sure to leave a message with your name and phone number.
Prefer texting over a phone call? Text me! Leave your first name with a request for a phone consult (no personal details necessary). You can be assured that I will call you back as soon as I am out of session.
We will chat briefly about the struggles you are having and about the desired outcome you want to see. After establishing that we are a fit to work together, we’ll set up a time to meet as soon as possible and get you on the path to finding greater happiness.
I’ve been successful and have a stable life, shouldn’t I be able to figure this out on my own?
I love this question. And I am passionate about my answer so this might be a ‘smidge’ long-winded!
You may have a relatively stable life, a good-enough relationship, a steady career, some positive hobbies, and all of that is well done. Truly. You know how to work hard and find successes. But when it comes to internal work, it is through relationship that we most effectively find healing, movement and happiness.
Discovering how you are showing up to relationship is information that can be hard to get to, yet crucial to finding further movement in life. It’s information that comes from honesty with yourself and kind honesty from others. It is the work of psychotherapy. It’s information that comes from relationship. Not from ‘doing better’ at life.
I believe you could keep ‘doing’ a lot of hard work through the positive healthy efforts of reading good material and practicing good habits. They are an effective supplement to discovering your goodness. But if you want new insights that are specific to you, to your stories that have shaped your life, then you need to work with that specific material. There isn’t a book written or a resource out there that can hold the specifics of your life the way we will hold them in therapy.
So, it has been relationships that have historically shaped and informed your way of being in the world, so it will be relationship that will continue to reshape and re-inform your ways of being. Lasting change happens for you through the honest, curious, empathic therapeutic relationship that we build together over time.
Oh! Did you want my short answer?!
You deserve to be joined and cared for regardless of how capable you are of ‘doing more!’ Let’s start this together…
Is therapy hard?
I think of it this way…Something is ‘off’ for you right now or you wouldn’t be here reading this. This means something about life is already hard. Patterns of relating that have worked in the past to keep you successfully and happily moving into the future are no longer working in a way that brings the desired happiness. That means it’s time to take pause and find the change you seek. This can be hard. But I don’t believe it’s as hard as it would be to continue down the current unhappy path.
What is expected of me? Can you guarantee I’ll feel better?
The expectation and guarantee actually come from both of us.
I guarantee to:
- pay attention with empathy, curiosity and depth
- provide a comforting presence and space
- offer a completely judgment free environment
- work to understand the issues that are hindering you as you experience them
- attend to your thoughts and feelings (not direct them)
- work to understand the relationship between us to gain insight into your interpersonal characteristics
- be care-fully honest with you
- be open to your honesty with me
Your part in the guarantee is to:
- commit to weekly sessions
- be ready to tell your stories
- be honest about your thoughts and feelings, especially those which are hardest to admit
- bring your questions and experiences of our relationship
- remain mindful of the work between sessions
With both of our committing to the above, I guarantee we will do good work of finding healing and movement for you.
