My Therapeutic Approach
The Four A's

As an intensively trained Dialectical Behavior Therapist, mindfulness or focused awareness, is the undercurrent of life.  Awareness brings "what is" into focus.  Creating stillness, openness, and curiosity gives us the opportunity to notice what is happening, inside us and around us.  In therapy, until we are aware of a "problem"--some ineffective behavior or thought pattern, something that is getting in our way--there is no way to change it.  I believe everything starts with the slowing down, paying attention to our internal state, and seeing what is actually going on.  What IS that?  What am I experiencing?  And what is causing me to think or feel or act this way?

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Awareness, the first "A", leads to the second A of ACCEPTANCE.  Acceptance is the acknowledgement of WHAT IS.  Not demanding that reality be something other than what it is. This is not approval, it is only the opposite of denial.  We no longer avoid what is happening, but allow it to be there.  We can still hate it, we simply can't deny its existence.  We sit with the truth of it.  And often the truth sounds like this:  "I do not want this thing (this character trait, this habit or behavior, this relationship, this diagnosis, this circumstance. ...), but there it is.  What now?"

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"A" number three, authenticity, is a kind of self exploration.  Often what we do or think or feel or believe, we have simply been handed.  Perhaps by our families or our partners, society or a particular belief system.  Authenticity, in this slowed-down space, lets us ask, "What part of this is MINE?"  What parts, if any, feel true to my core, my own sense of values, and what parts have I just taken on because I feel like I should?  (SHOULD is a powerful and often disruptive word for our psyches.)

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And, as we begin to discern what really feels like us, we can then ask the question, "What am I going to DO?"  This is AGENCY.  "A" number four.  In light of this new understanding, what needs to shift in my life so I am living closer to my truth?  Many times, every day in my office, I make this statement:  100% of the time, agency makes us feel better.  100%.  We always feel better when we feel we are acting on our own behalf.  Agency shifts us from where we feel constrained or stuck to a place where we can find some movement.

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This is ti.  This is my framework, the lens I look through.  And it looks absolutely unique person-by-person.  Sometimes folks walk in with full awareness, but filled with anger and resistance.  So moving toward acceptance is a starting point.  Sometimes it can take time to uncover what is actually going on.  That takes stillness, the ability to cultivate and tolerate stillness, and to sit with what is.

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This unfolding is beautiful work.