Professional Counselor Associate
MA, MEd
Supervisor: Daniel Schiff, PhD
Holistic relational therapy focused on healing at an emotional and bodily level--the heart of meaningful change.
Client Status
(503)4366647
1600 SE Ankeny Street
Portland, 97214
Rate: $140-$180
Provides free initial consultation
Practicing Since: 2020
Languages: English
You want a therapist who is engaged, compassionate and honest. Someone who will meet you. Someone who will be real. Someone who will value your life experiences and see your challenges as unique and meaningful. This is my practice. I focus on supoprting those stuck with trauma, grief, anxiety or sorrow. Those seeking more joy, play and aliveness. I also specialize--and especially enjoy--working with queer folk, non-monogamous people and other healers.
Specialties
I mix attachment theory with contemporary gestalt and relational psychoanalytic approaches. This means I prioritize building a safe therapeutic relationship. This is two fold, it creates a place to heal through experiencing a secure attachment (genuine compassion and support, honesty, productive conflict) and second it creates a foundation to explore vulnerable aspects with greater comfort, so we can get to the root and help you move forward.
Relational Gestalt Therapy is a process orientated, experiential approach, centered on your lived experience. It is a practical and optimistic approach. The central question is how do you connect to yourself, to others, to your environment? What strategies did you create to adjust to the life you've had? By creating a safe space to deepen into your experience, awareness expands, core issues clarify and can close. Space emerges for a new response, a new way to move and connect with life.
We are more than our words and thoughts, but a whole dynamic being with currents of sensation, impulses, and ways of moving that make up the fabric of our being. I have eclectic training in somatic therapy, primarily in contemporary Reichian therapy which explores a dual impulse (connect and resist) and aims to create fuller expressions of each. I use slow, exploration and presence from Hakomi, trauma informed tools from Somatic Experiencing, and my experiences in Yoga and Buddhist practice.
Relational psychoanalysis incorporates attachment theory, feminist and queer theory. Coalescing with Stephen Mitchell (ancestor to Esther Perel), healing is through a mutually collaborative exploration of the interplay between your inner process and the world you were born into. This includes your attachment history, relationship patterns, and working with the present moment, dynamics and emotions happening in session.
I have a master's in depth psychotherapy for individuals, couples and families. Depth therapy is a matter of deep, engaged listening and holding aspects of life with sacredness. Opposed to the pathologizing tread in therapy, we seek the unique support needed to courageously move towards deeper feelings in order to loosen the knots keeping you stuck. This journey connects us to our life spirit and paradoxically deepens joy and freedom.
Specialties
Gabriel Boyer has not posted any group sessions.
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