Alex Spare, LPC
Honest, reliable collaborator
We all have blind spots when it comes to our self-concept, and there is potential value in seeking support from those who can reflect our experience with empathy and who welcome all parts of us. Clinical knowledge and intuitive understanding both play a role in fostering an authentic, healing relationship.
TRAUMA-INFORMED and emdr-trained
Social, developmental and cultural experiences--past and present-- impact our thoughts, feelings, behaviors and relationships. Internalized beliefs, whether they are adaptive or not, often grow from events that shaped us before we were aware they were doing so. Or, sometimes recent trauma upends us and we need to learn to tolerate it before we can regain our equilibrium.
Relational-Cultural approach
The psychiatrist Jean Baker Miller wrote, "the greater the development of each individual the more able, more effective, and less needy of limiting or restricting others she or he will be." Conflict, confusion, and stress are inevitable. The more accurately we can know ourselves and each other, the more likely we are to protect, nurture, empathize, and love, which puts us in a better position to receive all of those same essentials.