Cynthia Phaerion (she/they)

We do not experience life in isolation; our experiences of the world are built in a relational context, and when our relationships are unstable, unsatisfying, or even frightening, the world itself seems to mirror those traits. By reorienting in relationship to others, by finding safe places for healing, trust, growth, and mutuality, relational therapy opens us to the richness, peace, and fulfillment that life has to offer.

As another access point for nonverbal work, somatic awareness allows us to deal with what is happening in your body, in your nervous system, in those places where things get stuck and no amount of rationalizing or reasoning will unstick them. Being with the body is a practice that is both deeply meaningful and at times overwhelming, depending on past experiences; together, we will move at your pace to expand your awareness and capacity for your deeply felt experiences, so that life itself become

Another access point for nonverbal work, somatic work allows us to deal with what is happening in your body, in your nervous system, in those places where things get stuck and no amount of rationalizing or reasoning will unstick them. Being with the body is a practice that is both deeply meaningful and at times overwhelming, depending on past experiences. By gently expanding your capacity to hold your own deeply felt experiences, life itself begins to feel both safer and more richly satisfying.

I specialize in working with clients with a history of attachment wounds, particularly developmental trauma and traumas experienced in relationship with others, including a broad spectrum of related experiences (abuse, neglect, exploitation, negative relationship cycles, and difficult or confusing relationships with primary caregivers or partners).

As with most "coping mechanisms" that cause problems in our lives, dissociation is at its root an incredibly powerful and adaptive tool for coping with our lived reality. When we live in a situation where it is our only effective tool for survival, however, we lose our agency and choice, and the tool becomes a trap. By honoring the ways dissociation serves us as well as expanding our ways of experiencing safety or protection, dissociation can return to its role as a helper in our lives.

For all of the talk about trauma, we often miss a deeper wound -- one that allows many of our most painful experiences to become moments of disconnection, isolation, and chronic distress, rather than momentary grief followed by comforting and peace. When we do not feel safe enough in our relationships to bring our pain to a trusted person, and to be received there with love, compassion, and trust, our relational pain becomes traumatic. New experiences of safety are essential to healing this.

We draw on visual media, narration, movement, sound, and beyond to respond to what comes up intuitively in you in response to your needs, your intentions, or the session itself. This process itself is healing, as well as providing fodder for further reflection, insight, metaphor, and beyond. Utilizing creative media with an intuition-based lens supports processing that which is not accounted for in words alone -- experiences that came before words, or seem to exist beyond them.