YES!  You and your partner have made the wise decision to build an EMBODIED relationship.  Read below for information about how to GET STARTED.

1. Phone Consultation: During your FREE 30 minute phone consultation I will gain an understanding, from your perspective, of why you and/or your partner are seeking therapy for your relationship. Based on your needs and my areas of specialization, we'll decide if I'm the right Therapist for your relationship.  If so, we’ll schedule our first appointment. If not, I will make an appropriate referral(s).

2. Paperwork: Once we’ve scheduled your appointment, you and your partner will receive a link from my online booking provider, SimplePractice.com. Prior to your first session you and your partner are required to review, complete, and sign the documents within the SimplePractice link including a brief questionnaire, informed consent, limits of confidentiality, policies, procedures, cancellation policy, the “no secrets” policy, and secured billing information.  This helps us save time during your first session. For more information regarding payment, please click here.  PLEASE NOTE I will not be able to see you and your partner until and unless paperwork from both of you is complete. I’ve received feedback that this process is relatively seamless and takes approximately 10-15 minutes.

3. First Five Sessions:

Session 1: We’ll spend the first 10 minutes verbally reviewing the paperwork you and your partner completed and signed online including informed consent, limits of confidentiality, policies, procedures, cancellation policy, the “no secrets” policy, and secured billing information. Next, I will hear from the partner who did not initiate the phone consultation as to why they are seeking therapy for their relationship. Then, I will ask you to reiterate why you are seeking therapy for your relationship. Thereafter, I will ask both you and your partner about what your perceived strengths and challenges are in your relationship. Because I offer an integrative psychobiological approach to therapy that includes the body, mind, and spirit, I will introduce you to basic resourcing techniques that will support you and your partner to remain grounded and present during your therapeutic journey.  I’ll also inquire about your culture and faith so that we can include those very important elements about who each of you are in our work together.

Sessions 2 & 3: In the second session I will conduct a "Primary Scenario" with your partner, which is a a relational genogram I utilize from Integrative Body Psychotherapy, that enables us to explore the road their family has paved multi-generationally and their unique life journey until now.  In the third session I will do the same for you.  This process offers a unique opportunity for all of us to cultivate a deeper understanding of who you are and where you’re coming from and will increase our relational empathy as a result.

Session 4: In the fourth session, we'll identify your dynamic attachment style in relation to one another and the ways your underlying fears and anxieties about relationship are colluding with each other.  We'll work toward identifying your "basic faults," which are essentially the unconscious lies you've been telling yourselves that both trigger arguments and build walls in your relationship and prevent you from getting what you want.

Session 5: In the fifth session, we’ll re-assess the presenting issues that inspired you and your partner to seek therapy, and compare and contrast those issues with pre-existing patterns we’ve identified from your primary scenarios, basic faults, and dynamic attachment styles, along with any traumas. Making connections between themes that originated in your past, which are are bleeding into your present relationship allows our work to go deeper, quicker, and with longer lasting results. This way, we avoid the trap of staying at the surface of “current events,” in our sessions and aim to get to the root of the problem(s), which is typically unconscious. From there we can work toward uncoupling the past and the present and work toward creating a mutually satisfying relationship. Once the groundwork has been laid and your "ah-ha" moments have been revealed we'll get to work!

Ongoing Therapy / How it Works: Integrative psychotherapy with a psychodynamic foundation, which is the therapeutic modality that I offer, is meant to be consistent and long-term. Ideally, the frequency we’ll meet is once to twice a week for a duration of one to two years. Through therapy you can expect to learn how to approach your partner in a way that can be received, communicate with your partner in a way that can be heard, collaborate with your partner in a way that will enable you to achieve individual and shared goals, and re-engage sexually in ways that make long-term monogamy - passionate, erotic, and mutually satisfying. What more can you ask for?!

My mission as your Therapist is to guide you to live an embodied life.  The word embodied means: to give BODY to a SPIRIT. Living an embodied life means your spirit is experiencing it’s fullest expression of energetic aliveness, in it’s container, your body.  It’s a feeling!  Through somatic, or body-based psychotherapy, you can expect to learn resourcing techniques that will enable you to feel grounded, present, and regulated.  You will enjoy reduced anxiety, decreased depression, increased resilience.  You'll gain awareness of who you are and what you want.  You'll fine-tune your intuition, release blocks that keep you stuck, and breathe vitality into your embodied self. 

Jessica Hansen is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and specializes in somatic psychotherapeutic modalities that draw awareness to your energy and nervous system. Jessica is a certified Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, Integrative Body Psychotherapist, and Master Pilates Practitioner.