Individual Intensives

You have a story. That story matters. It contains astonishing beauty… and probably more heartache than you realize. No one makes it to adulthood without experiencing harm. Many people are quite willing to name the ways they have done harm to others, but sometimes it can be harder to name the ways we have been harmed.

Once our heart is wounded, we often begin living in ways that promise to relieve the pain and assure that we will never be hurt that way again. Neuroscience research over the past 15 years has discovered that your past experiences in life become a filter through which you see and experience everything in the present. Counseling is about looking at how the story of your past is currently influencing the way you are living your life. William Faulkner said it best, “The past isn’t dead; it’s not even past.”

It is rare to find anyone who listens carefully and thoroughly. It is rare to find our stammering understood, our clumsy speech deciphered, our garbled syntax unraveled, sorted out and heard – every syllable attended to, every nuance comprehended. Our minds are taken seriously. Our feelings are taken seriously. When it happens we know that what we say and feel are immensely important. We acquire dignity. We never know how well we think or speak until we find someone who listens to us.

Eugene Peterson

When you begin to honestly share your story, and find that you are truly heard by another, a new freedom and new vitality come into your life. Each of us needs someone to bear witness to the core stories of our lives, and to help us make sense of why our life looks and feels the way it does. The goal of counseling, however, is not merely to understand our lives. The goal is to live—and to love—in a way that is simultaneously more tender and more strong, more alive to both the beauty and tragedy of life.