My basic roles
There are two.
Collaborative intentional meaning-making
My more visible task is helping my client learn, by doing, to make their meaning-making process more intentional.
Our unintentional meaning-making is pervasive and subversive, and we cannot stop doing it. Rather, one cultivates improved awareness and better-serving practices. I think of it as spiritual fitness, like physical fitness. These practices include:
- Focusing on our basic sensations, be they physical, emotional, or more abstract.
- Appreciating these sensations as themselves, and to describing them more genuinely using metaphor.
- Producing and comparing ranges of meanings and interpretations for these sensations.
- Making choices among the options.
Evoking authenticity
This task is more subtle, and harder. I invite the client to open up to me for an authentic, though professional, bond. Through the experience of this authentic connection, they may better find that authenticity in their selves and in their lives.
The underlying mechanism of forming this bond is my sincere belief in your best self. I wish to find that best self and make it belong: truly see it, get to know it, celebrate it, amplify it, support it, and set it free.
Connecting the authentic in you is the magic sauce. It gives your meaning-making an undercurrent feeling of being relevant and true. You start feeling like you're working with yourself rather than fighting an unknown adversary. The choices you make become elevated to commitments you keep.
Some attributes I bring
I'm good at making safe spaces. I radically believe in your right to your agency, and your knowing what is right for yourself. I am adverse to either side of domination/submission axes. I am a pacifist. I am compassionate. I celebrate the weird and I deeply identify with the oppressed.
I'm a good listener, good at "holding space". For those in less Californian circles, this means offering your full, steady, nonjudgemental attention. It means sitting with someone and everything they are experiencing, allowing yourself to feel it alongside them, and making all of it welcome.
I'm perceptive. I'm empathetic. I catch a lot of details. Just as the natural world reveals ever more beautiful subtlety as we observe it more closely, the human experience is rich and nuanced and layered. I'm not a one trick pony of communication. I hear words for their literal logical meaning, for their air of context, their tone of intent, and I see your body move under them with import.
I'm smart. As I listen I make sense of things, put them together. I see myself as a map-maker, fitting the patches of information into a quilt. I seek the story, the structure, or the kernel. I profess simple truths when they are powerful, and when they are not good enough I concede their shortcomings and reach for something more sophisticated. I dance between levels of abstraction: I appreciate both the big picture and the mire of details, and play them off each other. I use both the rigor of logic and the mystery of intuition.
I'm somewhat self-aware. Examples: I have lived under immense privilege. I am not done fighting my biases. My attention is as powerful as the Death Star's ray, and I must be careful where and how I point it. I am wrong constantly.
What's in it for me
I am a fiend for experiences of all kinds, but two things stand out as the most exquisite to behold: the beauty of the natural world and the complexity of the human mind. The moments when someone allows themself to be vulnerable with me and shares their genuine experience, when I have the opportunity to meet that gift with belonging, are some of my most precious.
For much of my life I pursued mathematics. It was a socially sanctioned outlet for my intellect, and I do genuinely love it. Over time, I became aware that I was not serving my purpose. My true self knows great sadness and suffering as well as triumph. I kept finding myself in a role of sharing that understanding and helping those around me. Eventually the truth became clear: the trench I belong in is with people's suffering, their uncertainty, and their disconnection. And I want to be valued and supported for doing that work.
If you would like to learn more
Feel free to use my scheduling page to contact me for more information.