Sometimes people are confused by the terms “counseling” and “therapy”, or the odd term, “psychotherapy”. Counseling is usually limited to offering emotional support, giving helpful information and assisting the person with goal-setting and building skills for reaching those goals. Therapy refers to achieving a deeper change of perspective, awareness, character building and resiliency. Psychotherapy is a term that distinguishes it from physical, occupational, and other therapies. If we use the analogy to physical health, counseling is more like your doctor telling you to go on a diet and psychotherapy is more like your doctor setting a bone.

When I work with a person, we work together to assess what is needed, what is wanted, and the options for achieving it. We look at the whole person in their physical body and social context as well as the thoughts and feelings filling the mind. We can draw from a number of therapeutic approaches like psychodynamic, family systems, cognitive therapy, EFT, and EMDR.