I’m not the "How does that make you feel?" kinda therapist.
What makes therapy with me different? Well, in order to understand that, let me tell you the quick story of why I became a therapist.
When I was 10 years old my dad passed away from cancer. It seemed like everything became about survival & just making it another day in my family after that, which caused me to feel really unimportant...
So I looked for love, attention & acceptance in other areas.
I was a people pleaser, one to follow the crowd, & struggled to find my place most of growing up. I had no idea how to stand up for myself & what I really wanted... so I struggled with settling & going with the flow out of just wanting ANYONE to give me attention. I just wanted to feel valuable & important.
I wanted to appear as I was okay & normal.
I tried fitting in & I tried to keep it all together to look cool & find acceptance. It felt like I was the ME that someone else created.
I started stuffing my needs, my voice, & who I was, to make friends, have a boyfriend, to go along & fit in & be seen as "good" or "valuable" to someone.
I lost my voice in my romantic relationship & I didn't know how to NOT be walked on. This carried into adulthood. And it didn't help that I had never really seen a healthy, secure relationship.
I ended up storing up LOTS of hurt & anger, which really only affected ME. I didn't talk to anyone about my struggles or hurts & was determined just to deal with it on my own. Why would I want to be seen as "weak"?
I thought my feelings & needs were an inconvenience.
I stayed surface level, with my husband, my friends & family. I struggled with authenticity, intimacy & vulnerability in relationships.
We live in a time where everything is filtered to look JUST right & we only post the pretty things, but on the inside we are crumbling, lonely & lost.
But how do you change course when this just seems to be the way everyone is living?
I remember the straw that broke the camel's back really happened when I was at my limit, so eaten up inside with the hurts of my struggling relationships, loss of boundaries & inauthenticity that I saw in myself.
I was really at the brink of getting a divorce because I just could not take another minute. I was appearing "okay" on the outside but I wasn't. What made it worse was that I didn't share anything with anyone. I felt alone.
One day, it all just came spilling out to a friend. I told her about my marriage problems, issues with my family, how I was struggling, stagnations with work & friends & I hadn't planned any of that.
But that volcano of emotions & hurts & angers that came bursting out without caution was the best thing that could have happened to me. I realized in my vulnerability & realness, it opened the door for her to do the same. I SAW THAT FEELINGS WEREN'T WEAKNESS. Her marriage was struggling too. Her work situation was hard too. Her boundary issues with family was a constant battle as well. I never would have guessed because everything LOOKED so great on the outside.
It changed the way we interacted. I realized that my struggles & hurts made me human & relatable to the other person, because let's be honest, none of us really have it together.
Vulnerability leads to true community & relationship.
I became passionate about being real & authentic, searching for that in other people & helping others achieve it too. It changed the way I was in my marriage, my friendships, my family, people I worked with & others that I interacted with on a daily basis.
I have a passion & drive for helping people be true to themselves and finding that authentic intimacy & confronting the incongruencies in their life.
I used to say about myself "What you see is what you get!" But it wasn't! I wasn't being real, which in turn made all of my relationships inauthentic. I wanted to change that for myself, I wanted to revive my marriage and I want to help others do the same for their relationship.