Our Process
My approach to working with clients is a synthesis of many different approaches to personal learning and change. What makes my work stand apart from that of other relationship coaches and therapists is my somatically-based, action-oriented approach. I’ll work with you to shift your whole self - body,* mind, and spirit - to be able to take different actions than you have in the past. We’ll take a look at your history, but we won’t linger there; instead we’ll focus primarily on where you want to go and how to get there.
Each client is unique and my approach is always customized for each individual or couple. But over the years I’ve been able to distill some key elements of my process that show up with virtually everyone.
Underpinnings of The Process
Over the past few decades, research in psychology, biology, and neuroscience has revealed that social and emotional learning involves the body far more than previously thought. Experience-dependent brain development begins in the very first few weeks of life. In other words, your life experience literally shapes the physical structure of your brain and nervous system. This is especially true early in life, when your brain and body are developing rapidly. Your brain automatically extracts patterns from your environment - especially patterns of relating designed to keep you as safe, connected, and respected as possible in your early family and community environments. These early-set patterns, because they’ve been with you for a long time, can be very stubborn to change. You’ve probably had the experience of gaining a new idea or insight but being unable to put it into action. When you’re dealing with relationship-based patterns that developed before the logical, rational parts of your brain were fully mature, gathering new insight is especially poorly suited to change. You’re better off addressing the parts of you that learned the pattern in the first place: the body-based sensory and emotional experiences that are a child’s first and primary lens on the world. That’s why working through the body is a faster and more reliable method of changing relationship patterns than just conversation alone. This approach addresses the pattern at its root and builds new patterns at that foundational level, too. Many relationship breakdowns are rooted in our early life history. That isn’t because Freud said so, it’s simply because that’s how biological and behavioral learning works. Your history played a key role in the person and the partner you’ve become today. If there’s something you don’t like about how you’re partnering, let’s work together to help you build new patterns that will get you more of what you want. If you are interested in further reading on this topic, I recommend the beautifully written book A General Theory of Love. |