About Therapy
Making Sense of It All
You may have heard a lot about therapy — different schools of thought, different approaches, different kinds of therapists.
Or you may have no idea at all what therapy is or what happens when you go to therapy. After 15 years working with clients, and myself having been a client, this is what I can tell you.
Therapy is a process in which you and I work together to make your life better. And everyone’s process is different.
The Many Roads that Lead to Healing
Some clients may have longstanding difficulties with aspects of their childhood that they want finally to feel peaceful about.
Others may feel that their working life falls short of their hopes and their training, but they don’t know how they can, or if they can, make a change.
Others may feel dissatisfied with their relationships, and others may simply “want someone to talk to.” The nuances and the reasons people come to therapy are as diverse as people themselves.
Whatever it is you bring, you are welcome here.
That said, the process for each client has these elements in common: you talk, I listen, and here and there I ask questions.
The questions — mine for you and yours for me, if you choose — lead to deeper conversation. Session by session, we develop a relationship, a “therapeutic alliance,” as it’s sometimes called.
Through this relationship we work toward your achieving the goals you were aware of when you first came to therapy and the goals you discover along the way in therapy.
How we work on those goals depends on what works best for you; and in the process, we discover together what that is.
About Margaret
Most of the people who make their way to my office have found themselves on what they think of as an nontraditional path. I understand.
After spending the first two decades of my life in North Carolina, I’ve made my home in places as diverse as Lagos, Nigeria; Montreal, Canada; Boston, MA; and Southern California. What I’ve discovered along the way is that “home” is not a geographic location so much as it is a place I carry inside myself. As long as I am comfortable with myself, I can be comfortable — that is, at home — anywhere.
And that’s what I’m committed to helping you feel, too. At home with yourself, at home in your relationships, at home in the world.
Before becoming a psychotherapist, I was an editor in educational publishing. A master’s degree in English from Georgetown University honed my instinct for listening to stories and appreciating the author’s voice.
Being a therapist gives me the opportunity every day to do just that – hear your story and appreciate your voice.
After 20-plus years in publishing, I felt a call to work more deeply, to help people turn their stories not into books but into lives – their lives, lived more meaningfully and more peacefully.
To do that I enrolled at Pacifica Graduate Institute, earning a master’s degree in counseling psychology. I returned there later for a Ph.D. in depth psychology with an emphasis in psychotherapy.
I saw my first client in 2004 and continue to appreciate every story, every day.
I look forward to hearing yours and working together on coming home.