Understandings:
- I believe that therapy is for regular people who are wanting change.
- I believe that we each have inherent wisdom and wholeness already present in us and that my job as a therapist is to spark curiosity and cultivate compassion in order to create openings for wholeness to emerge.
- I believe that therapy can help us connect to what makes us fully human, and can help us learn to embrace our longings and our vulnerabilities and to lean into our own humanity with tenderness and compassion.
- I believe that being human means that we long for meaningful connection, not only within us but also extending outward to others who may share our spaces – pets and people – and to the world outside of our windows. The journey inward can mark the way for the journey outward.
- I believe that therapy is an act of deep courage.
Training: MSW, LCSW (What do all those letters mean?)
I first began my career in the field of mental health by exploring what it was like to walk beside people navigating the most challenging of circumstances including domestic violence, sexual violence, and with people who had been hospitalized because their ability to cope on their own had reached a limit. I learned a great deal about the resilience and courage of people facing what looked like the edges of their limits.
I subsequently decided to pursue my studies more formally and entered the Master of Social Work program at Western Michigan University, graduating with my MSW, followed by completing a Post-Master’s Fellowship program at the Menninger Clinic in Topeka Kansas.
My clinical practice since that time has been primarily providing individual therapy to adults interspersed with several years of taking time off to be present for my own growing children. I am currently licensed in the state of IN (LCSW-licensed clinical social worker) and I remain committed to continued learning. I have received extensive training in the areas of depression, anxiety, trauma, complex trauma, and a variety of other mental health challenges.
Approach:
I have come to greatly appreciate the interconnections of personal story, emotions, body memory, and meaning. Key experiences in our stories can set the patterns of how we function in the world, how we feel about ourselves, how we feel in our bodies, and the meaning we make of our lives. My approach has been informed by the science of neurobiology which underscores the interconnectedness of our feelings, thoughts and bodies, and by polyvagal theory which provides the mechanism for using the body to find a more calm and connected center. In practice I draw on the wisdom from the following approaches:
- Narrative therapy which asserts that our identities are born in community and that we make meaning by understanding more completely the complexities of our multi-stories
- Cognitive behavioral therapy that focuses on how our meaning-making and self-beliefs set the tone of our existence
- Attachment theory which underscores that we are hardwired for connection and our interactional styles are profoundly influenced by early attachments and reinforced by current attachment patterns
- Internal family systems which appreciates the adaptive roles we take on to protect ourselves and meet our needs for survival and connection
- EMDR and sensory approaches which provide the mechanism for experiencing the deep connection of past, present, emotions, meaning, and stored body sensations
- Mindfulness and compassion which set the tone for how to do this incredibly hard work with a sense of wonder and curiosity and with deep tenderness.
jbrunklcsw@gmail.com