Buddhist Therapists in Maple Valley, WA

Secure and confidential online supportive care from your place of comfort and safety. Process your life story and welcome your authentic self; Shift perspectives and learn new ways to be resilient and motivated through your healing journey. This practice currently welcomes those with personal trauma. Influenced by decades of therapeutic training and personally living through disability diagnosis. Together we can consider disruptions in cognition, emotions, and vocation caused by disability and other PTSD sources.

Are you looking for a Therapist who understands the strengths and complexities of individuals and families from diverse cultural backgrounds? Not happy with where you are in life? Are you dealing with life transitions such as parenthood, divorce, a career change, death of a loved one, diagnosed with cancer, or caring for aging parents/ill family member/special needs child? Feeling depressed or anxious about challenges in balancing work, family and your personal needs? Then contact me to discuss how I can assist.

I am a collaborative, directive, and supportive therapist, who can help you find new ways of thinking about life problems in a supportive and safe environment. My goal is to build trust and collaborate with you if you are dealing with problems related to anxiety, depression, relational issues, and other life challenges and transitions.

At the heart of my practice is a commitment to neurodiverse-affirming care, where your unique way of thinking about and moving through the world is honored and supported. Going beyond typical talk therapy, I use a dynamic fusion of therapeutic modalities including Buddhist Psychology, CBT, NLP, art therapy, mindfulness, and nature-based strategies to help untangle stuck patterns and facilitate meaningful change. Whether you're grappling with stress, anxiety, depression, or seeking guidance through life's challenging crossroads, I'm here to provide compassionate support, build up your strengths, and encourage bravery in order to

Anxiety, trauma, and stress are at all-time highs. Jobs and relationships that (you thought) promised satisfaction fall short. And then you go and surprise yourself with a drinking problem, binge eating, or overwhelming burnout. You might work in a demanding field, like medicine, tech, or finance.

You’re looking for relief and real change. It may appear like you have it all together, but on the inside you feel doubtful, burdened, unfulfilled, and stressed. Maybe you’re caught between different cultures, struggling with your identity and finding your place in the world. You might be carrying the trauma of your past or family history and seeing the impacts at work, home, and in your body and relationships. Maybe you're deeply worried about the state of the world and don't know how to move forward meaningfully. Even in your free time, you may find it difficult to truly relax and rest, your sense of pleasure and purpose depleted.

I work with young, midlife, and elderly adults in all phases of life transition, whose lives have brought them to a place where they want support to work through difficult, stuck, or critical times. What often appears problematic is evidence of a solution trying to happen. I see this as an organic process which can come with disturbance, frustration, over-stimulation and/or depression. What you sometimes can't see by yourself, you can see, navigate, and resolve with the help of another. My approach is to join my clients in their quest for resolution, meaning, and happiness.

I work with teens and adults who are struggling with life challenges including anxiety and depression, trauma and PTSD, relationship difficulties, and existential concerns. I am also comfortable working with spiritual concerns and experiences, and eco-grief and eco-anxiety. I view therapy as a voluntary engagement with a process of discovery and transformation. I seek to foster your natural curiosity about yourself and your life, and help you connect to the parts of yourself that have grown distant. Everyone's process is different, and I view my expertise as a supplement to your natural capacity for self-healing and growth.

I welcome people who are facing any number of challenges including life transitions such as divorce, job loss, illness, death of a loved one; all shifting the ground beneath us in dramatic ways. What worked no longer works. My trMy training as a Mindfulness Meditation Teacher complements training and practice in psychotherapy addressing a dysregulated emotion system resulting in various symptoms such as anxiety, panic, depression, and identity disturbance and sometimes even a desire to die or hurt oneself. There can be a painful sense of isolation and feeling unmoored. There is a way out; first understanding, then tools to heal.

Acknowledging that you might be in over your head isn't weak, it's wise. Have you tried calming techniques, but your anxiety still attacks you? Or relationships always seem to go sour or you never quite feel at ease even when everything's OK? Maybe it's time to look a little deeper. It's not that cutting off toxic people or upping your cardio won't help, because they probably will! But sometimes the wound goes deeper than that or the situation you're in is just too overwhelming to sort through on your own. When things like that go unaddressed, they sabotage even our best efforts at creating the life we want.

Even when we know that some of our emotional pain is unnecessary, on our own it can be difficult to figure out why the extra suffering and how to make it better. Anxiety, depression, trauma re-activation, relationship difficulties, and coping strategies are natural responses to life experiences and circumstances. Do they need to hurt so and are we stuck with them? Therapy is a great place to gain perspective on what you can change. Also, to widen the horizon from managing pain to living more fully like yourself and to thriving. Because, as Thich Nhat Hanh said, "suffering is not enough".

We each have the ability to adapt, overcome adversity, feel joy and sorrow, love, and reach our highest potential. Stressful life events, trauma, loss, conflicts, illness, and transitions can overwhelm our ability to cope. Healing becomes blocked. We become stuck. We protect and defend ourselves to avoid ever feeling that pain again. Solutions that once worked become part of the problem. When the traumatic wound is triggered, we experience intense emotion and distorted ways of thinking. In therapy, we journey together to uncover and remove the blocks to healing, transforming pain and loss into meaning, awareness, and choice.

I believe that you already contain a deep power for healing inside. Together with kindness and curiosity, we will create a safe and accepting space where all aspects of you are welcome. Our journey will be one of shared exploration and discovery. I am here to guide and support you along the way. Our work will originate in the here and now—what is present in your life currently, learning to meet what shows up with care and compassion. I love counseling those in transition— be that career, gender, or otherwise and draw from feminist, existential, Buddhist, and somatic frameworks and work from a trauma-informed lens.

I specialize in helping couples, families, and men deal more effectively with their emotions and difficulties in their important relationships. I also offer executive coaching and support for leadership development and proactive personal growth. My style is warm, interactive, holistic and direct, and the strength of my approach rests on forging a genuine and trusting working relationship so that you can feel comfortable in getting real about what's happening with you. As your sense of trust and readiness deepens, we'll take stock of what changes are needed and find personal, realistic and creative ways to help you move forward.

We live in an overly stimulated world even while hiding from a virus, with constant choices regarding how we spend our time and energy and procure our needs. The amount of content we engage with daily has most people overloaded and unfocused. Which means, most of the time, we are not truly listened to or seen. For some, stepping into therapy is the first time they have experienced being heard and seen, wholly, genuinely, and comprehensively. The initial experience of being heard, can have a profound effect on one’s life. That is where we will begin. In a space with presence, non-judgmental empathic listening, and acceptance.

I help people develop resources to work more mindfully with impermanence. Aging, illness, death, identity transitions, relationships – all bring us face to face with fear, anxiety, and insecurity. The courage and wisdom to live through change and loss become possible with a clear, steady commitment to loving oneself and others. I work with my clients to become curious, have a sense of humor, feel grace, cultivate friendships, and embody kindness in order to access joy in the everyday moments of life, even with life's many challenges.

I want to help you find solace, clarity, and a sense of ease to the things in life that seldom make sense. Often this is asking big questions in the face of life's hardest curveballs. I will encourage meaningful and honest conversations about the things in life that are challenging for you to explore. Together, we will make a space to be able to give life to the words that are difficult to say out loud and help you grow in ways that feel useful to you. This can be a painful process and most often is worth it.

Is there something holding you back from the life you want? Do you feel stuck or overwhelmed by changes you would like to make but find yourself repeating old patterns? Working with the body and the mind, clients are supported in exploring and bringing awareness to habits that are no longer working, accessing their natural curiosity, loosening stuck, scary, or confusing places, and reconnecting to their creativity, resilience, and well being.

Creativity, parenthood, and other major life transitions - such experiences can evoke vulnerable, sometimes flooded states, highlighting our obstructions in the forms of worries, doubts, resentments and despair. Using tools informed by your personal dharma, a deeper understanding of your attachment style, and Buddhist practice, let's work together to bring understanding and self-compassion towards these obstructions in an effort to dissolve them in some lasting ways.