Therapy in Ames, West Des Moines and online

If you are experiencing marital troubles, communication issues, couples stress, have gone through a major transition and are seeking to better your relationship with your partner, couple counseling may offer a great path towards reconnection with what truly provides a sense of purpose and meaning in life.

Relationships are what we humans are made for. And yet because our needs for connection, love and understanding are so vitally important to us, our most central relationships can also be our most challenging ones.

The good news is that we heal our hearts and brains by learning how to nurture and be nurtured by our supportive relationships. It is through mastering the challenges to showing up in our current relationships with compassion, acceptance, and genuine care that we rewire our brains and heal the wounds of our past.

Learn how to fall in love again with PACT

In sessions with me you will have experiences with your partner that rewire the nervous system so that you may again experience your partner as a loving and caring support who adds energy and vitality to your life. The PACT approach uses established and modern research in neuroscience and human attachment theory to understand and address our challenges in staying present and open to our partner. Through our work together, you and your partner will learn how to create win-win-win situations where you, your partner, and your relationship get stronger and add value to the system as a whole.

I do couples work with committed partners, married couples, and between parents and their young adult kids to foster greater trust, connection and love. I strive to treat all people with dignity, care and respect, regardless of age, race, sexual orientation or gender/sexual identity.

Learning how to overcome our fears in partnership translates to more courage, freedom and connection in all areas of our life. It is through our relationships that our heart is healed.

Though our technology and many habits of modern life may keep us from remembering this fact, we belong to and are dependent upon this wild, vital planet Earth. By reconnecting our senses with the natural rhythms, sounds, smells and sights of nature, we can awaken a deeper sense of belonging and atunement with the world around us. Many of the woes that ail us in our modern lifestyle – loneliness, isolation, disconnection, lack of purpose, depression, lack of vitality, sense of numbness – can be ameliorated by fostering a living relationship with the natural world. Whether we spend time regularly with the birds in the tree outside our home or go for long adventures in wild places, by bringing ourselves into the out of doors, we give ourselves the opportunity to rekindle a sense of wonder, peace, joy and belonging.

My work with clients often incorporates assignments that involve deepening one’s relationship with nature as a means of developing greater resilience, presence and intuitive intelligence.

Learn about my Being In Nature course offered through Story County Conservation.

As parents, one of our chief responsibilities is to prepare our kids to meet the challenges of the world they are inheriting. When we see our kids struggling, it can often bring up anxiety, stress and, if severe, fear for the worst. Fortunately as a parent, you have perhaps more power than you know to support your kid’s continued healthy development even if they have already left the nest, so to speak. 

My background as a therapist and Clinical Director of a program supporting hudreds of teens,  young adults and their families navigate challenging transitions has taught me that when parents are actively engaged in changing how they parent during difficult times, kids respond. As a parent coach, I work with parents to help them implement tried and true interventions that strengthen the foundation from which their kids gain stability and confidence.

Stress management and stress reduction are common goals for therapy. With the prominence of heart disease, chronic stress syndromes, generalized anxiety and rampant worry, learning how to manage stress and anxiety are vital skills to live a more fulfilling life.

I help my clients connect with domains of their experience that lay behind the stress and work with them to apply skills learned in therapy into their daily life in order to find greater ease and peace as they pursue valued life goals.

Would you like to have greater ease in your daily life? Do you feel like you are running fast but not getting much traction? Is it hard to relax and unwind? Do you feel the balance in your life is a bit out of whack and you are struggling more than you feel you should?

I have spent over a decade serving emerging adults and their families as a life skills counselor, therapist and Clinical Director at a nationally renowned private therapeutic program in Boulder, Colorado. In that time I developed an approach to my work that deeply honors the necessary identity exploration, the healthy skepticism, and the need to experiment and explore possibilities that this phase of life entails.

I believe that as a society we are flagging in our responsibilities of meeting the needs of our young people by failing to provide education that promotes reflection on personal values, encourages creative exploration, and builds emotional resilience. To face the social and economic challenges of the 21^st century, we need life skills to match the challenges and opportunities of today’s society. The information service age is a markedly different landscape than any we have faced before in human history. Navigating the pitfalls posed by social media overexposure, while harnessing the possibility of greater collaboration and connectivity the digital age promises requires that we engage new skills to relate to the volume of information our brains/minds must process. Skills that train mindful attention, cultivate values clarity and increase impulse control are the new stock in trade needed to wade our way through a sea of information that floods towards us each time we turn on a connected digital device.

I believe the Millennials and Gen Z young people have before them unprecedented opportunities and challenges in charting a course for the future of our society. There is no more valuable work I can do than to support the noble and creative discovery process that unleashes the power and potential of a young mind active in uncovering what is possibile.