Taylor Freund

I believe that in order to survive difficult times parts of oneself often have to break away so that the remaining part of you can carry on. My approach in therapy is to empower you to give that distant part of you a way to heal and reconnect without up-ending your life, and for you to become whole once more and stop the ongoing inner battle…even and especially when that seems impossible. In this way I firmly believe that your greatest healer lies within yourself, or as the poet, Kahlil Gibran, calls it, “the physician within.” A great contradiction of being human is that in order to unlock that healer within, we must be meaningfully connected to others. Therapy is a safe place to learn how to genuinely connect again.

My goal is to provide a place where you feel heard – not only heard by me, but also by you yourself. I want to hear how you envision healing, then give you a safe place to land and some tools along the way to bring that healing into reality.

What can you expect from our sessions? Genuine listening, compassion, a sense of humor, collaborative creativity, mindfulness, options to use mind-body approaches and a special importance on connection are the things you can expect working with me. I want to help you connect to your inner sense of yes, no, and not yet, and to learn how to draw upon these to emancipate yourself from places of stuckness in your life. Our sessions will go from laughing together to holding a kind and honest space for things you’ve been keeping inside. I will present options to you if you like, and empower your freedom for how you want the session to go – maybe you decide to talk, meditate, breathe, or connect with and release stuck stress through a body-based approach such as acupressure, movement, stretching, or more. We will move at a pace that doesn’t flood you, and also that doesn’t feel like you’re just stagnating. We’ll also check in with your whole system – your body, mind, heart, and sense of connection to others, yourself, and your sense of purpose in this world. Understanding how these aspects of you intertwine helps you not to accidentally make your healing more difficult.

What you won’t get from me: If you’re looking for a therapist who will give you an itemized list of things you need to fix, I’m not your ideal therapist. I will also not simply nod my head for an entire session and then ask when you want to meet next.

I am especially skilled at working with adults who have a hard time remembering or verbalizing traumatic experiences, as well as working with people who are struggling with recent traumatic events and want to prevent them from forming into long lasting struggles. One of my passions is also working alongside people bearing chronic pain of any kind. I have experience working with: PTSD, Complex PTSD, OCD, Phobias, Anxiety disorders, perinatal onset mood disorders, Depression, Bipolar, “personality disorders” (put in quotes as you will find I don’t like this terminology), chronic pain, eating disorders, sleep troubles, existential issues, addiction, relationship related stress and attachment issues, grief, the ongoing trauma of systemic oppression, and trouble adjusting to major life changes.

My approach uses a combination of techniques, and I always like to check in with each client which combination is best serving them and adapt the therapy accordingly. No matter what, I always use good listening, and the specific styles I can use include Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Mindfulness, guided meditations and breath work, polyvagal theory, Internal Family Systems therapy (completed The Circle 6 month training through the IFS institute), and a body-mind technique called EFT which uses acupressure combined with an evidence-based therapy technique. I am currently learning and training in the Somatic Experiencing approach.