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Somatic and Connections Counseling

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Relationships can feel so mysterious.

Dizzyingly changeable, sometimes terrifyingly bleak… yet so hard to live without.

We find our ground, our feelings, and ourselves through relationships.

We can also lose ourselves through relationships… devastated by loss, rejection, and hurt.

Discovering who we are…

Devon came to Connections Counseling because, according to her partner, he had been “closed off.” His partner felt rejected.

Devon felt smothered in the relationship… as he had so many times before.

In the past, he just broke up with people who made demands of him. But, this time, he thinks he might be in love, and he wonders…

“Is it possible there’s something I’m not aware of that makes me closed off?”

He’s not sure. He thinks maybe he’s just an introvert… maybe gifted. Maybe all his partners are too needy.

Devon comes to see me and, soon, he wants to reach out to his partner. He begins to discover needs and wants that he had sectioned off long ago. He discovers his depth of love and feeling… and how hard it is to feel that when others are around.

He begins to find a way to connect with himself and with others at the same time.

Valuing who we are…

Heather isn’t sure why her boyfriends keep ignoring her.

Why does she keep meeting such jerks? They seem great at the beginning, and then they begin to go cold, distant. “What’s wrong with people?” she wonders.

And, in deeper moments, she wonders, “What’s wrong with me?”

Through our work, Heather begins to discover something: she is lovable. And early on, she laughs as she says, “I’m lovable, but dang it – I’m screwed! I really DO keep just finding the same man, don’t I?” And then, curiosity: “Why?”

As we work together, with lots of laughter and lots of curiosity, she touches a depth of sadness—the sadness she felt when she was young and alone so much of the time.

As we connect with this place within Heather, something begins to shift: she begins to value “alone time.” She begins to value connection with lots of people rather than obsessing over just one person. She begins to eventually draw to a different kind of man—one who delights in her, treasures her, and welcomes her calls.

They have conflict, sure. But she no longer feels unwanted, yearning, obsessive. Something is different.

Why connections counseling?

We seek counseling when we want something to be different.

When our connections feel as though they follow a script into disconnection, there’s something for us to learn ABOUT ourselves. But it’s something we can’t learn BY ourselves.

Before coming to counseling, many of my clients know their Myers Briggs profile, their enneagram, “how to win friends and influence people,” why “he’s just not that into you,” and have done more than their share of research into what’s going on.

Some have journaled many pages trying to figure it out. Some have friends who have heard the story again and again.

Yet, something remains stuck. The pattern repeats. The pain continues. The loneliness deepens.

How we break the pattern.

We help you understand your old experiences and where your script comes into play.

And, more importantly, we help you have a new experience. Research shows that the best positive outcomes in counseling focus on the interactions between client and counselor in real time.

Why is this?

It’s because, well, wherever you go, there you are! And somehow, something in you interacts in something with us out here that keeps leading you back to ground zero… alone, misunderstood, stranded.

But, with me, you won’t stay stranded or confused. You won’t be alone.

I will work to stay connected to you and help you see what’s in your way of connecting with me… and this will translate into your life out there.

Probing into your life and script with curiosity and purpose…

Even if I don’t understand all the relationships you’ve had, we’ll understand lots more by sitting together and sifting through our experience, with curiosity and purpose. We’ll welcome whatever we find.

When Devon came to tell me about his being “closed off” in the relationship, I noticed that it was hard for him to keep eye contact with me. Rather than asking that he keep eye contact, I asked him to notice what happened when I closed my eyes. He began to feel a sense of relaxation in his body, and even more ease as I moved to the back of my chair.

We soon discovered what made him feel connected… and what happened when I came into closer contact. He discovered, for the first time, that when his partner was accusing him of being selfish, he wasn’t actually being selfish… or just being silently gifted.

He discovered, as I moved closer to him and kept eye contact, that he was actually scared.

As we worked with ways to help him find relief from that fear, connection became more natural. We welcomed his experience over and over together—all the layers of yearning and fear tangled together.

He began to emerge a gifted introvert, yes… but one capable of deep connection.

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When Heather came to see me, she was really obsessing about her boyfriend. A lot. In fact, I wasn’t sure if she noticed me! Her words went on and on in circles. I eventually said, “I hear how heartbroken you are. But I can’t tell if you can hear me and my support. Can you?”

She realized suddenly that she didn’t hear me—not really. Her obsession with him was taking her away from taking in my support. Was that what had been happening with her friends, she wondered?

As we worked to connect, she began to notice how much her circling thoughts took her away… and she also began to discover how much less lonely she was when she began to connect, in the moment, with the people she was with.

Over time, learning to feel grounded in herself, learning to have a sense of a boundary, learning to notice how capable others were of connecting with her…

She began to have a new relationship—not just with a guy (he did come in time!) but also with friends, with her parents… with me. It all started right here… in the moments between us.

Relationship blind spots and the scripts they give us…

We ALL ward off connections in ways we aren’t aware of. Past experiences can give us blinders in relationships, scripts… and we often gravitate toward our expectations outlined in those scripts.

These scripts can be unconscious. It’s not as though we walk up to a new friend or group and actually hand them a script: “Hey, tell you what. I’ve been hurt a lot and I kinda feel unwelcome everywhere I go. So I’m going to kinda subtly hide and if you could just forget to invite me to things, that would be great! Okay?”

We don’t walk into relationships and say, “Hey, I’m afraid I’m too needy. And if you can just be ever so slightly distant in between periods of being really nice, it will make me really obsess over and you become so needy I feel like a psycho. Can you do your part here?”

The hidden language of the body…

Our body also tells ourselves and others what our “script” is.

It also can keep the script going, below our radar.

A client and I connect with the sinking in her chest that I notice, and she says, “It’s like it sinks when I feel rejected…”

As we get curious about this sinking, what it feels like it says to her, she connects to the words she never knew were there, but they feel vivid now: “I’m unlovable.”

Another client’s body is pulled in and back.

As I encourage him to try the opposite, he finds feelings and beliefs that are very different from his usual ones: “Huh, I’m taking up space. It feels good! I feel…worthy. Bigger somehow.”

Another client keeps her chin up and her chest puffed out.

She doesn’t notice it, but when we bring attention to it, she’s able to find the tenderness that “toughness” is hiding — and her body begins to relax.

Working with your body’s signals is like having a freeway to your emotions and beliefs…

…it tells your story in a way that’s sometimes more profound than words.

As clients feel seen in their body language, their eye contact, the ways their hands literally seem to reach or pull back, they feel seen on a deeper level than sometimes just our words can reach.

Your body can let us know where you’re stuck, how you learned to escape the pain in your past, and how you may be accidentally keeping it going in the present.

Your body also tells us how to help you get unstuck, too.

You can’t connect if you can’t breathe.

You can’t truly see others and take us in, if your eyes are too busy vigilantly tracking for danger.

You can’t reach out if your hands are behind your back or find tears if your chin is lifted up.

When we notice these things, we can begin to find new options. We can connect with pain that years of talking may have kept us away from.

We can transform that pain and that old belief into something new.

Sometimes, toward the beginning, clients say things like, “I never knew I felt this way,” or, “I feel hope! I thought everyone else was far away. I had no idea ‘I’ was retreating!”

When we work with the body and connection together, you can feel grounded AND lovable.

“I can connect AND have a boundary.”

“I’m not so scared now, and that makes me feel like I can let others a little closer.”

As we work with your body and your patterns of connection, moment by moment, we’ll also find a path to transformation, that gets to happen right here in the room between us and extend out into your world and your relationships.

We really don’t mean to do these things!

Nonetheless, others often unwittingly follow their side of our scripts.

It’s an accident. It’s an attempt at healing the past by recreating it.

It’s complex. It’s simple.

It’s agonizing. It’s healable.

We work with it here by noticing the script. We work with it by breaking the script—on purpose.

This work is profound. It’s beyond learning “communication skills.”

You can come to me with your script. In fact, you most likely will whether you mean to or not.

Part of my job is to avoid falling into it… to notice it… to find ways to find a new experience together.

Part of my job is to help you identify your “lines” and find new ones.

As much as I’m saying you’ll learn new lines, I don’t mean a prescriptive, “Say this…”

I mean that you’ll find what you really want to say from your true self.

You ARE capable of connection…

In this work, clients laugh. They cry. They begin to look at me and really take in the regard in my eyes. They hide and they peek out.

They discover fear and sadness they had no clue was there.

They discover depths of joy and vitality they didn’t know were there.

They discover that they’re kinder, deeper, and more playful than they knew.

So come play. Let’s help you flip your script.

Let’s connect and help you connect to yourself, to others, in a new way.

Call (541) 224-6732 today to set up a FREE 30-min consultation

Schedule your appointment online today!

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