More about the process of psychotherapy.

Each of us is organized around our important relationships. From the time we are infants until we are adults we do better when our important relationships are functioning well, and we are in stress when they are not. We grow in response to the ways that our needs for comfort and help are provided for. (And we responded to the pain or even trauma when comfort and help were not there.) We privately weave these early experiences into the unique fibers of ourselves. Although out of awareness, we carry these creatively woven patterns forward with us, shaping our lives and our relationships. These patterns can serve us well and help us to have accomplishments and satisfying relationships as we move on in our lives. These patterns can also be what is guiding us when our lives and relationships are not going well.

Our enduring patterns lead to our way of being in relationship, how well we value ourselves, how close and connected we can be, and our general life contentment. Yet sometimes these very patterns that have helped us in the past are what cause us problems now. These almost invisible threads of our being are the underlying warp of our lives, and these threads are also involved when our relationships are not working. These patterns continue and we have the same kind of relationships even when we are trying to connect to people in a new way.  These invisible threads can also keep us out of relationships even when we want a satisfying intimate relationship more than anything else.

An important first step in freeing you to make changes in how you are relating now is by loosening these threads to your past connections. With understanding more of what you are doing you will be more able to change ways that you interact within your relationships. Your sense of self, your behavior, your relationships can change in deep and abiding ways. You will learn to listen to and understand yourself in increasingly useful ways. Psychotherapy is the opportunity to do some re-weaving of parts of yourself. The effects of some of your earlier experiences can be reworked to exchange some of the limiting patterns in your particular fiber for patterns that allow you more satisfying relationships.

I will work closely with you as together we come to care for and understand the less obvious parts of you, discovering your more hidden patterns or suffering.  This is a mutual project of discovery that can be deeply meaningful and helpful in your life

 Gloria Londagin, Ph.D.

503-224-8116

glondagin@gmail.com

3041 NE Alameda Terrace

Portland, OR 97212