Asheville, NC
ABOUT ME
Professional Credentials
- B.A., Economics, UNC-Asheville (2009)
- M.A., Clinical Mental Health Counseling, Wake Forest University (2012)
- Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor (NC) #9577. Licensed since July, 2012
- Certified Sensorimotor Psychotherapist, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute
- EMDR trained by EMDR Consulting, LLC
Why "Body-Integrated Psychotherapy"?
A personal reflection
For years as a kid, I could barely speak. There was nothing wrong with my vocal cords, or my brain, but speech therapy hadn't helped. When I was 17, a kind and practical speech therapist, Jeff, helped me recognize that my severely limiting stutter was rooted in muscle tension all over my body. In order to speak, I had to learn to relax. I didn't realize it at the time, but Jeff taught me a lesson that I've spent the past decade and a half making sense of: the body holds the key to so much of our pain and distress.
In college, a powerful dream image of a human body included these words: "The way in is down." Its meaning was a mystery to me, but I stayed curious. Over the years, a series of chance meetings led me to the practice of somatic meditation, and then to the professional practice of Sensorimotor Psychotherapy. Looking back, I can see that the dream was guiding me to trust what the body knows, and to help other people do the same.
"The body know things a long time before the mind catches up with them. I was wondering what my body knew that I didn't." - Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees
Over the last several years I've met all kinds of people: men who couldn't feel, and did things that hurt themselves and their families. Women who were haunted by memories of terrible mistreatment. Jail inmates who destroyed their lives with drugs to numb feelings they didn't understand. People who couldn't sleep, didn't cry, had panic attacks, lived with mysterious pains. Talking about their problems helped a little, but not enough. "Figuring things out" wasn't satisfying. They needed more from me than a kind word or a brilliant insight. They needed an experience of healing. I began to discover that while this experience was not mine to give, I could help find it. "The way in is down," the dream said. Go down from the head, and let the body, which speaks the language of sensation and movement, be your guide.
If it sounds strange to go through the body to change your thoughts and feelings, that's because it is. Letting go of the divide between mind and body, "hardware and software," is a challenge for me everyday, and this is my job! I am a pilgrim on this path, not a guru who has had some fundamental, once-and-for-all conversion experience. But emerging research in neuroscience, trauma studies, and other fields, along with my daily practice, encourages me to "try it and see."