Counseling
Individuals
Healthy relationships begin with our relationship to self. This is the foundation for everything we give to the world and for so many, this very foundation is insecure, unstable and even painful. Sometimes our realities don’t match our hopes. Something is missing and life can feel incongruent. For some, the foundation of early relationships didn’t value the authentic self enough to support natural, attuned, secure development. Sometimes, living feels like suffering, and we’re not entirely sure why.
None of us likes feeling pain, grief, or sadness, and we can do a lot to avoid those uncomfortable emotions. But they're still there, just under the surface (or far below). And when we can stretch ourselves to actually stay with those feelings, when we keep our hearts and minds open, allow them to have some space, "make friends" with what those feelings might be trying to tell us, and attend to the deeper need, we also strengthen our heart’s capacity to tolerate more joy, more happiness and love, and more intimate connection with others.
“Trauma results in a fundamental reorganization of the way mind and brain manage perceptions. It changes not only how we think and what we think about, but also our very capacity to think.” ~ Bessel Van der Kolk
Life has a way of bringing us to our knees. For some, it feels as if this is an ongoing process, and feelings of depression, anxiety, and anger can overwhelm us. And the thing is, we are not meant to face these obstacles alone. We are designed to share the burden of our suffering. We are designed to feel connected, to live interdependently.
An attuned therapeutic relationship can be the foundation for healing some of the marks that life has left in the wake of trauma, relationship difficulty, isolation, and attachment issues. At Colorado Couples Clinic, our relationship with you becomes the ground for your next step forward, and cultivating an authentic, collaborative, and trusting partnership is key. When people feel isolated, simply being with others can become a platform for changing deep neural structures that try to convince us that we are alone. We can begin to heal and re-pattern those beliefs, simply by being together, by holding the difficulty of life together with one another.
Individual Counseling Areas:
• Relationships
• Individual Couples Counseling
• Communication Difficulties
• Trauma
• Sexual abuse
• Stress and Anxiety
• Depression
• Eating Disorders
• Life Transitions
• Anger Management
• Addictions
• Boundary Setting
• Grief and Loss
• Body Issues
Couples
Love, by its very nature, is not a secure thing. It is fragile and mysterious with no guarantees, bringing out the best and worst in most who traverse its grand territory. Loving ignites both passion and fear as we attempt to either hold it closely or avoid it altogether. In love, there is nothing solid to clutch to, but instead, a call to trust. The fundamental need to feel connected to and safe with an intimate partner is a powerful driving force, often in direct opposition to the inherent fear of vulnerability in intimacy.
We’re innately wired for love relationships where we feel seen and “known” by our partners and where we feel our truest nature reflected in our partner’s eyes. We are designed to love and love deeply — to become the best versions of ourselves as relationships take us to new edges and challenge our perceptions — because they always do.
For intimate love to thrive, there are emotional muscles that we all must build so that we can strengthen our tolerance, stretch our capacity, and deepen our embodiment of what love truly requires.
At Colorado Couples Clinic, you can learn how to reorganize the way your brain automatically responds to the inherent difficulty of intimate relationships. Because even when we understand what we need to do differently, the emotional centers in the brain take over and we often find ourselves in debilitating relational cycles that lead to hopelessness.
I often experience people believing that when they dismiss their own feelings to appease another, they are being kind or "skillful" in the relationship because, of course, they are the one "giving in," or "being flexible." Yet doing so can unconsciously lead to resentment, and resentment leads to toxicity that is often so subtle and pervasive that we don't realize how destructive it has become until it has annihilated our relationship.
This certainly doesn't mean that we shouldn't sometimes give in to our partners, that we shouldn't choose to make another's desire more of a priority than our own at times. It simply means we need to be mindful about the choice to do so — that we need to continue to hold our own desires and emotions at the forefront, to continue to see them as equally valid. It is this balance of holding our own and another's perspective equally to make mindful choices in negotiating our desires that creates a powerful foundation for conscious love.
Couples Counseling Areas:
• Relationship Difficulties
• Communication Difficulties
• Sexuality and Intimacy
• Infidelity
• Life Transitions
• Parenting
• Co-Parenting and Blended Families
• Pregnancy and Birth
• Masculine and Feminine Embodiment
• Addiction Issues
• Boundary Setting
• Taking Relationship to the “Next Level”
Groups
The idea of joining a group of people to talk about deep, personal issues sounds intimidating to many people. But within a group of people who are attempting to work through similar issues, tremendous healing can occur. The collaboration, bonding, and support that can come from sharing our lives with others can heal and rebuild core beliefs about support in community, “fitting in,” and the basics of trusting both ourselves and others.
Research is bringing to light the profound evidence that relationships — whether intimate connections or those built within close communities — are one of the primary factors of a happy, fulfilling life. For more information on what creates happiness, read here.
“No matter how much insight and understanding we develop, the rational brain is basically impotent to talk the emotional brain out of its own reality.” ~ Bessel Van der Kolk, M.D.
At Colorado Couples Clinic, our focus is on developing healthy relationships, with self and with others, in intimate partnerships, families, friendships, and communities. Building the skills that are essential for maintaining relationships that nourish our lives isn’t something that most of us were taught from our early years, but the field of neuroscience is providing evidence that these necessary skills are teachable and learnable, and learning them — particularly in a group setting — can reshape our experience of connecting with others, because it is through our connections with others that we become who we are in the world.
Colorado Couples Clinic holds both individual and couples groups, depending on interest, and is open to six to eight participants who are diverse in age, gender and sexual identity, relational status, and cultural origins. While groups are focused primarily on cultivating healthy relationship skills and processing through the vast territory of people’s attempts to create and maintain healthy relationships, groups tend to create themes somewhat organically based on the present needs, concerns, and desires of group members.
Groups are held once per week and times vary. Group cost is $55 per session and sessions last for 1.5 hours. We ask for a minimum of a 10-week commitment and every 10 weeks, groups allow new members to join for two weeks before the next 10-week segment begins.
For more information about groups, or to share your interest in becoming part of an upcoming group, please email info@coloradocouplesclinic.com or call 303-956-7622. You can also share your interest by filling out the form on the Contact Page.
Group Counseling Areas:
• Relationships
• Communication Difficulties
• Trauma
• Boundary Setting
• Stress and Anxiety
• Isolation
• Life Transitions
Ketamine Assisted Therapy
Ketamine is a legal medicine that has been widely used in the field of anesthesia since the 1970's. Over the past two decades research has demonstrated that it is effective at treating a number of mental health conditions, including depression, severe anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), suicidality, and addictive disorders.
While not everyone is a candidate for ketamine, including clients with certain underlying medical or psychiatric conditions, the physicians at Skylight determine eligibility via online telehealth visits and are involved with care throughout the entire process.
While undergoing ketamine-assisted therapy, my clients also have access to the physicians at Skylight Psychedelics, who have extensive experience in psychiatry, addiction medicine, internal medicine, and psychedelic medicine. My clients have direct contact with the pharmacy team, a virtual integration yoga program, an integration manual, and carefully curated Spotify music playlists for use during ketamine sessions. If you’d like to read more, here’s a short article I wrote: Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy
For more information about KAP sessions, please email info@coloradocouplesclinic.com or call 303-956-7622. You can also share your interest by filling out the form on the Contact Page.
Couples Ketamine Therapy
One of the promising areas of exploration in my own practice is Ketamine Assisted Couples Therapy and how partners with whom I work often experience a “letting go” of defenses with one another, an increased ability to see some of the cycles they get into with more objectivity, compassion, and grace, and increases in longing to be more deeply connected with one another.
There’s little research in Ketamine work with couples, and I’m excited to be able to journey into this space with my clients, with Skylight Psychedelics as part of my team in supporting this work.
Get in touch
Colorado Couples Clinic understands that finding the right therapist to support your most personal, intimate work is a choice not to be taken lightly. That’s why a free phone consultation is available so that your needs are understood and we can explore whether or not this is the right fit for your therapeutic goals.