My Approach
I practice Pastoral Psychotherapy, which I have come to understand as a synthesis of a fundamentally psychodynamic approach to therapy with a grounding in spiritual direction and an emphasis on an Internal Families System perspective. I draw on these elements in different ways and different combinations depending on the individual I’m working with.
You can read more about and find additional resources concerning each of these elements here.
What follows below is more my philosophical and poetic approach to therapy, to give a little sense of what it might be like to work with me.
You can read more about and find additional resources concerning each of these elements here.
What follows below is more my philosophical and poetic approach to therapy, to give a little sense of what it might be like to work with me.
The opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. Paul Tillich
Of course, we seek evidence and certainty. A desire for clarity, simplicity, and resolution is quite understandable, and we often convince ourselves that this is what our growth will look like. But maturity involves and is concerned with growing our capacity for ambivalence and ambiguity, with developing our ability to hold multiple experiences and feelings simultaneously. This requires depth and breadth of soul. Pastoral psychotherapy is about cultivating such spaciousness.
Of course, we seek evidence and certainty. A desire for clarity, simplicity, and resolution is quite understandable, and we often convince ourselves that this is what our growth will look like. But maturity involves and is concerned with growing our capacity for ambivalence and ambiguity, with developing our ability to hold multiple experiences and feelings simultaneously. This requires depth and breadth of soul. Pastoral psychotherapy is about cultivating such spaciousness.
To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence.
Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander
Merton was speaking of action in the world, but we can just as easily adopt a certain relentlessness in our own self-improvement project. The first step in healing is to slow down, to allow some space and some grace. There are many techniques that can support such opening.
Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander
Merton was speaking of action in the world, but we can just as easily adopt a certain relentlessness in our own self-improvement project. The first step in healing is to slow down, to allow some space and some grace. There are many techniques that can support such opening.
This is what you shall do…re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem. Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
Once we can pause, the task is to notice what’s there within us. What have have we failed to notice because we have been moving too fast? What truths, told to us by others, have we been living out unreflectively? What truths have been waiting within us to be heard and recognized, literally re-known? In listening deeply to you, I will help you learn to
listen more deeply to yourself and to the guidance, the Truth, that is available to you.
Once we can pause, the task is to notice what’s there within us. What have have we failed to notice because we have been moving too fast? What truths, told to us by others, have we been living out unreflectively? What truths have been waiting within us to be heard and recognized, literally re-known? In listening deeply to you, I will help you learn to
listen more deeply to yourself and to the guidance, the Truth, that is available to you.
And if only we arrange our life in accordance with the principle which tells us that we must always trust in the difficult, then what now appears to us as the most alien will become our most intimate and trusted experience. Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Invariably, our greatest experience of joy arises from our deepest pain, our most profound liberation flows from those places we have been most trapped, our deepest sense of belonging emerges from our most anguished loneliness. This is the way of the soul’s journey. It is my job to gently guide and companion you as you return to these most difficult moments and experiences so that you can see them, and yourself, in new and revitalizing ways.
Invariably, our greatest experience of joy arises from our deepest pain, our most profound liberation flows from those places we have been most trapped, our deepest sense of belonging emerges from our most anguished loneliness. This is the way of the soul’s journey. It is my job to gently guide and companion you as you return to these most difficult moments and experiences so that you can see them, and yourself, in new and revitalizing ways.
You must realize that something is happening to you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall.
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Indeed, there is nothing to fear. You are already and always whole.
Review resources that give further insight into Psychodynamic Psychotherapy, including a video, and links to reputed works.