Counseling Near Asheville

Despite our sense that these times are particularly difficult, we know that our ancestors suffered too.  They experienced loss, death, physical challenges, separation. All the things that we do.  They may have experienced them differently, however. 

Healthy cultures were more interconnected.  They depended upon one another in concrete ways.  They had rituals of trance, grief and celebration built into the fabric of their existence. We have lost these practices in our race toward “progress.”

This leaves a gap that therapy attempts to fill. While therapists simply can’t substitute for tribe and an interdependent culture, we can draw in some of the healing elements.  For me, those are:

• Relationships in which a person feels seen, known deeply, cared about, and connected to others.

• Somatic practices to release the stress and trauma of existence. 

• Rituals that mark significant transitions and milestones

• Assistance in developing a comprehensive understanding that encompasses a larger view of experience beyond their individual pain.

In addition to filling those gaps, therapy also addresses the overactive mind of the 21st Century human.  The extreme amounts of information, decision making, and competitiveness that exists in our current culture results in a highly activated prefrontal cortex and disconnection from our bodies. The result is anxiety, stress and discontent. 

There are no cookie-cutter solutions to this sort of untangling and re-imagining, but at the core, my work is personal. I believe we are transformed by relationship as much as insight.  I also use IFS, somatic practices, nature and expressive therapies to get past the chatter of the mind and closer to where the psyche lives.