Psychotherapy:

whole-person
strength-based
neurologically-informed

with a focus on life's more complex challenges.

There are three phrases that make possible the world of not-yet...
And they are simple phrases.
“What if...?”
“If only...”
”If this goes on...”
— Neil Gaiman

Modalities

Interventions

  • EMDR, Somatic Experiencing

  • Hypnotherapy

  • Meditation and Breath Work

  • PsychoSpiritual Counseling

  • ACT/DBT (Acceptance Commitment Therapy; Dialectical Behavioral Therapy)

  • Crisis Intervention and Mediation

  • Voice Dialogue and Integration

  • Journaling and Narrative Reconstruction

Specialties

  • Depression

  • Anxiety

  • Mood Instability

  • Relationship/Intimacy

  • Addiction

  • Trauma, Dissociation, PTSD

  • Chronic Pain and Illness

  • ADHD

  • Stress and Anger Management

  • Sexual and Gender Orientation

  • Memory Issues

  • Weight Management

  • Grief and Loss

  • Blended- and Step-Family Transitions

When you consider all the time and energy we spend fruitlessly trying to control our pain and avoid negative experiences, and then weigh the painful result, we know that making an effort to do something radically different is worth it.
— Steven Hayes

Top Three Reasons Why People Don't Come to Therapy

#1

Instead of Therapy, I can read a book on better communication skills."

If that was the answer, divorce would not be a national epidemic, especially damaging our children who we most want to protect. While communication skills certainly help resolve conflict, they are often the tip of the pinecone.

Good therapy improves intimacy which is the single highest contributor to happiness: trustworthy, respectful, safe, kind interaction. 

Healthy intimacy is also the most complex challenge we face.

Fact #1

Relational rules were laid in to your infant consciousness ages 0 to 3 and usually continue to be the (often unconscious) template for current relationships. Yikes.

#2

Instead of Therapy, I just need to keep training for the marathon, eat organic, walk on eggshells, fix my house, fix my partner, take my meds, cleanse, do more yoga, minimize possessions, lose weight, buy the perfect (fill in the blank), take naps, get a face lift, find my dream partner…

Spending time and money in attempts to control our environment, our future, and control other people distracts us from developing real control: the control within ourselves, which finally quiets our anxiety.

Fact #2

Neurons that fire together wire together, especially in trauma, and even more especially in early childhood trauma. Yikes, because those same neural networks keep triggering (often inappropriately) in the here-and-now.

#3

Instead of Therapy, I talk to my friends and/or family about my problems; its more comfortable and much cheaper.

Would you have friends plan or build your house?  How about perform open heart surgery?

Though you will share deep affection and trust with your therapist, a good therapist is not the same as a good friend. In therapy, you are paying for expert guidance, interpretation, encouragement, and challenge, all specific to you.

Fact #3

We usually choose the ways we protect ourselves when we are very young and, at that time, had about three options from which to choose. And then we stick with those defenses, like life rafts in deep water. Yikes, because we have better choices as adults than the (now maladaptive) choices we made as children.


[Before] I leave this world, one thing I wish the world to know is that human contact is made by the connection of skin, eyes, voice tone. These are the things that taught us before we had words.
— Virginia Satir
We are educated in so many subjects other than ourselves,
when we are more complex than any of them!
— (brilliant) Client

Traditional Diagnoses: the Problem with Boxes

Traditional Diagnoses are like boxes that contain problematic symptoms. They are often a place we begin therapy, an attempt to find order in the hope of then finding solutions.

However, we are faced with one major and inherent problem: the diagnostic boxes do not actually work! They almost always overlap, become superimposed, and shift in relation to one another:

  • Anxiety is Depressing.
  • Post Traumatic Stress causes Anxiety.
  • Mania can look like Hypervigilence.
  • Dissociation can appear Psychotic.
  • Etc.

Psynergy's Solution:  The Quadrants

The Quadrants are a way to conceptualize the interconnected aspects of ourselves.  They allow us to understand the complex ways we function, or don't function, effectively and efficiently. 

If we can work collaboratively within the quadrants of self, we find that our whole more integrated system is much bigger and better and more harmonious than the sum of the parts.

With less struggle and more ease, (and more laughter), we move forward with our lives...and we can illuminate the world.

...and also because Psynergy Therapists are chosen for their:

  • Ethics and Boundaries (Rule #1: DO NO HARM)
  • Depth and Breadth of Training (including their own therapy)
  • Agility: to Pace, Re-imagine, and Individualize Your Work Together
  • Sense of Humor
  • Their Commitments to Providing Sliding-Fee Therapy to Those in Need
  • Full Grasp of the Interplay Between
    • Neurobiology and Trauma
    • Genetics and Personal History
    • Mind and Body
    • Relationships Within Ourselves and With Others

We never lose. We either win or learn.
— Nelson Mandela

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Dr. Catherine Boswell, Psychologist

"It takes courage and stamina to seek help and then risk receiving it. In therapy we will look at current issues, connecting the dots back to childhood to help us understand how to better manage present, and often pressing, challenges. Creating an emotionally safe and respectful environment sets the stage for growth and understanding. Compassion holds us steady as we learn acceptance and take chances to risk hope and connection..."

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Victoria Jones, MEd, MA, LPC-S

"Life's challenges can sometimes force us to shut down in order to keep going. In therapy, we look at your essential patterns of living and relating--main themes which may have begun in childhood or later. We will look at the ways you cope with and protect yourself in difficult circumstances and how effective they are. Research continues to show that the single most important element of successful therapy is the client's relationship to the therapist as a person, and with the methods of therapy. Another crucial element is the strength and courage you bring to the work..."

When you shine the light, darkness disappears. 
We may understand this as a kind of fight between light and darkness, but in reality, it is an embrace...
...[You must be strong enough] to embrace your fear or anger and transform it...in a nonviolent, non-dualistic way.
— Thich Nhat Hahn

Primal tensions can bind, entangle, block, and bury us. They can also save and protect us. We have wrestled these confounding factors into seven statements that guide therapy, inform our achievement, and protect our intrinsic rights.

At Psynergy, we hold these truths to be both elusive and self-evident:

  1. We all have the right to be here and exist, and sometimes, life's challenges force us to shut down to keep going. 
  2. It takes courage to seek help, and stamina to risk receiving it. We all have the right to need something.
  3. We all have the right to autonomy with support, knowing that intimacy with others is initially an inside job.  
  4. We all have the right to connected attachment and connected detachment, the ebb and flow of intimacy.
  5. We all have the right to speak our own truth, and, unless we know our story, we will repeat it.
  6. We all have the right to follow our own bliss. To find it, we have to know that our very successful survival strategies of the past that protected us, and those we love, and our happiness, can become maladaptive and destructive. They must therefore be replaced by better, less costly defenses.
  7. We have an amazing capacity to adapt to, and normalize, exhausting and existential struggles with relationships, depression, anxiety, grief and loss, addictions, trauma, stage-of-life and end-of-life issues. In all of this, we have the right to find our own spiritual path.