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A counseling practice at the interface of psyche + spirit.  Working with adults and adolescents

          Life is rich (and complex) and human life can be challenging.               

                 By nature we are always breaking new ground.                                                 

                                               

         We are each individual, unique works in progress.

                    We also get stuck.

          There is no formula, no rule book. 

                      But honestly, Would you want it any other way?

       

          How do you find your truth?

                                             Where are you tangled?

                                                                          What are your patterns

                                                                                                            What is unseen?

                                     

                                                 Where do Answers Come From?


 

Counseling can support you to see, hear and trust yourself.

Together we will listen to what you are bringing, meet where you find yourself at present,

make way for the you that is longing to become.

We will work to discover and develop your relationship with your True Self, 

                      the one that knows.

                               

Meaning making reflects that we are creative beings 

As human beings we seek to make meaning. It belongs to us existentially. We have an innate sense of purpose that we wish to embody. As we learn to read our life story objectively we can find our rightful place in itWe can reach beyond the confines of our reactive self to understand what belongs to us, what we can let go of, and what is asking to be born. 

FACT: Meaning making shows us not only as creative beings, but also as co-creators in the world and on the cosmic stage.

All parts are welcome.

Our strife reveals that things are incongruous. Parts of us may make choices and act in ways that are not desirable or true to ourselves.  The counseling process provides an opportunity to discover the conflicted and the often veiled elements of ourselves. We can clear away barriers so that all parts can be honored. Rather than acting blindly in unconscious and habitual ways, we can move forward to align with our authentic self and life's purpose. We can make friends with our parts, and through this process build a relationship with our True Self.  

FACT: All parts have good intentions

Saying YES 

Staying present to what IS allows us to accept the truth of the moment so that we can move into the future with full awareness.    

Through contemplative and embodied practice we can also build our faculties of awareness. We can develop calm, clarity, compassion, connection. We can move toward greater awakening. When we awaken in ourselves as spirit we discover the many possibilities and all pervasive wisdom available to us  

Relationship matters.  So many of our doubts and feelings of  incongruity come from our relational world. Early relationships, in particular, can set the foundation for who we become.  Our greatest healing also comes through relationship.  In the unique relationship between client and counselor a new felt experience paves the way forward   We create new neural pathways, new muscle memory, and ultimately, a new relationship with our Self.

 

 

new connections. As Human beings need each other... to strengthen and support one another - 

"We are all on a journey, one that is best traversed together, with joy and gratitude, and the realization that no matter our differentiated natures, we are all linked as one interconnected family on this precious planet we share, this home we’ve named Earth."

         - Dan Siegel

A Big decision/The right fit..

Let's talk/meet 

To book a free consultation  971 242-4208.

I can support this change process in the following areas:

  • Rescuing the self from the fog of depression.

  • Processing through sexual abuse.

  • Gathering perspective on your own learning, mental health and attentional challenges or those of your loved ones.

  • Managing and alleviating anxiety.

  • Developing a healthy relationship to food and a positive body image.

  • Moving from relational co-dependence to interdependence.

  • Exploring Gender and Sexuality.

  • Working through Existential and Spiritual Crises.

  • Connecting to who you really are and expressing authentically from that place in your life and relationships.

Adolescence

career

Buddhist psychology makes a clear distinction between pain and suffering. Pain is an unavoidable aspect of the natural world. It is physical, biological, and social, woven into our existence as night is with day, as inevitable as hard and soft, as hot and cold. In this human incarnation we experience a continuous ebb and flow of pleasure and pain, gain and loss. Inhabiting our human society is the same: we encounter praise and blame, fame and disrepute, success and failure, arising and passing constantly.

Suffering is different from pain. Suffering is caused by our reaction to the inevitable pain of life. Our personal suffering can include anxiety, depression, fear, confusion, grief, anger, hurt, addiction, jealousy, and frustration. But suffering is not only personal.

My theoretical orientation is an integration of family systems, relational psychodynamic, humanistic/existential, and internal family systems (IFS). When working with couples, I integrate several models: differentiation-based, experiential (emotion-focused therapy and IFS), and Gottman.  

 

To schedule an appointment, please call: +1.5033135186. 

ART OF HUMAN BECOMING PART 2

SANDEEP

Welcome. I want to honor your willingness to explore the possibility of beginning therapy. It’s a brave step that opens one up to the potential for healing and growth.

 

As a licensed psychotherapist that works with individual adults and children, I have witnessed therapy’s ability to improve a person’s quality of life. I specialize in serving children, adolescents, men, and people of color, and I use meditation and presence of mind to assist through this process.

 

I work with people experiencing anxiety, depression, trauma, relational issues, life transitions, healing from loss, as well as children coping with parent divorce.

 

It is a privilege to earn my client’s trust, and I’m committed to creating a safe place for my clients to “unpack” thoughts and feelings.

 

I encourage you to learn about my background, and my approach, and ask yourself if it seems like working together would be a good match for your healing process. If so, I would be honored to help you and/or your child along your path to greater wholeness.

Robin has been practicing psychotherapy in Portland for over twenty years. Initially trained as a child and family therapist in the psychodynamic tradition, Robin has continued to broaden and deepen her experience and skills through further training in Gestalt therapy theory, contemporary psychoanalysis, Collaborative Couple Therapy, anthroposophy, and hatha yoga.

More recently, Robin has combined her life-long passion, artistic painting, with her enthusiasm for the healing power of the psychotherapeutic relationship and now offers curative painting as a treatment option. Robin uses her skills drawn from these rich traditions to provide a dynamic, compassionate and individualized approach in working with her clients, including individual adults, couples, adolescents, children, and families in transition

 BIOGRAPHY. 

(moving beyond the story and making meaning/meaning making)

Working with biography is a process of experiencing yourself as both subject and object.

It reflects what you are bringing, where you find yourself at present,

what you are being invited to become.  

It reveals your life's meaning and purpose. 

It asks you to come into dialogue with your own biography in order to

reach through to the truth of your being

Working with biography we learn to read the life story. It speaks TO US not from us. We learn from ourselves. It moves beyond telling the story from our perpetuated and unconscious biases. Biography invites you to meet the future that is calling you! "Allow your real self to guide and lead your life (RJ 105)

Working with concrete events from their personal biographies, clients learn to recognize the presence of their higher I within. In doing so they begIn to understand the role they have over their own destinies, so as to live their individual life journeys out of genuine freedom.

It brings a new dimension to the therapeutic process/counseling by offering a pathway to healing/transformation through a deeper, spiritually oriented understanding of the human being; 

referencing phases of development which span the lifetime and 

recognizing our relationship to the cosmos across the biographical landscape.

Learning to read your Biography reveals your life's meaning and purpose.  

Your unique life story is made accessible. 

Trauma and pain can be transformed from obstacles to opportunities.

The question "Why is this happening TO me?" becomes

"Why is this happening FOR me?".

AND 

(the inner wrestling and the heart  of the matter)

We get tangled.  We get stuck.  We get caught in our emotions,

trapped in an old story, rooted in family dynamics, driven by habitual patterns, rutted in neural pathways.  Finding balance between thoughts and feelings (and actions) often requires more than intellectual understanding or insight. We need to be met some place deeper, to have a felt experience.

Counseling can provide direction and a safe space to......

 Mindfulness is helps us to separate from our emotions, to see ourselves objectively. 

From this place we can meet our Self as/with inner calm, curiosity, compassion and clarity.  

When we move beyond witnessing and interact with our parts

we can affect an even deeper healing.

We can have a new experience and embark on the pathway to our intrinsic future.

So we go deeper.

DEVELOPMENT

 

Biography is about experiencing yourself as both subject and object. It asks you to come into dialogue with your own biography in order to reach through to the truth of your being.

It  invites you to discover and engage with the part of you that is aware and eternal.  Biography is about meeting the hidden author of your unique life story, and from this place,

It is about re-membering your future.

 

This is human development.

​facilitator.  Finding your truth/true Self/true & evolving Self. A psycho-spiritual counseling practice.  Individual/personal/ psycho-spiritual/inner inguiry, investigation, negotiation, development counselor.

Together we will explore your questions, the conflicts, the barriers. WHAT DO CLIENTS WANT for themselves and from me?.

           I come to this work with a deep trust that somewhere in you, you know exactly how to heal yourself. My focus is to support you to clear the barriers, which keep you disconnected from that knowing.  We will listen deeply together to your story, both your brain’s and your body’s to discover the intuitive passageway to the healthy vision you hold for yourself.

Ask the question that clients are bringing re the situation they are facing

Current brain research tells us that talking out our problems (using our prefrontal cortex) can only take us so far in any change process. All of us have had the experience of knowing a habit or pattern we are stuck in is not working for us. We may have even come to insight after insight about the root of that pattern and know what we need to do to make a change but somehow the very action we know will free us from our pain or frustration, eludes us. Awareness is an imperative and often challenging first step where we can get stuck: knowing what we need to change but not being able to change it.

 

Here’s where our work together comes in. I facilitate a deeper process for exploring these habits and blocks that impacts neural patterning so real change can happen.  By making new connections between our prefrontal cortex (where cognition happens) and our limbic system (where emotion and feeling states occur) we can literally rewire patterns of behavior.  It is through real life practice of new ways of being and responding that we gradually find ourselves naturally making healthier choices.

Dan Siegel, psychiatrist & neurobiologist, shares "Integrating a coherent story involves bringing together themes from our past with the ongoing story of our lives as we move into the future."  

FACT: Meaning making shows us not only as creative beings, but also as co-creators in the world and on the cosmic stage.

FACT: Meaning making shows us not only as creative beings, but also as co-creators in the world and on the cosmic stage.

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