My approach is to be genuine, intuitively receptive, and collaborative. My energy in the room is soulful, steady, and nurturing. I put myself at my clients level so that there is a sense of safety, acceptance, and teamwork rather than hierarchy. I find that hopefulness and healing tend to happen from the very first counseling session. As a therapist, my first priority is to make sure that my client’s specific needs are being met, whether that be spiritual growth, relationship healing and growth, self-healing and growth, or all of these things. After all, they do tend to overlap.
One of my core strengths is helping clients move beyond patterns rooted in past emotional wounds. I am a unique and seasoned blend of depth therapist, transpersonal therapist, and couples therapist. With nearly 20 years of experience working with individuals and couples, I have a vast tool kit; mindfulness and somatic tools, energy healing (I’m a Certified Level 2 Energy Healing Practitioner with ACEP), Imago inspired relationship tools, guided visualizations, transpersonal psychotherapy, mild hypnosis, breath work, grounding, Ecotherapy, inner child healing, Emotional Freedom Technique (tapping), Conscious Romantic Love (inspired by John Welwood and Thich Nhat Hanh), Conscious Dating, Conscious Parenting, and Soul work/Shadow work, and shamanic soul retrieval techniques inspired by Carl Jung, Thomas Moore, Pema Chodron, David Richo, and Sandra Ingerman.
In my own personal life I have benefited tremendously from learning to walk a path of mindfulness, conscious romantic love, conscious parenting, and shadow work. When I know it will help, my clients will hear one of my own real life examples of how I have enlisted a self care practice or a relationship practice and successfully healed from a core wound or overcome a painful relationship pattern. We all need a little relatability and inspiration sometimes, especially when we are in a place of despair. I am here for my clients in those moments of despair. Believe me, I too have been there. And I have discovered many tools and healing modalities along the way. My goal is to help you become your own best therapist by helping you strengthen your connection to your own soul, your own Higher Self. I will help you embrace, integrate, and heal your shadow; the core wounds causing the unwanted patterns that have been holding you back form reaching your full potential. And as you do so we will both rejoice and bear witness as your hidden strengths and soul gifts blossom.
We become more and more adept at learning to face our fears by embracing our pain. We learn to track the deeper story behind the pain and the mood of un-love that we keep circling back to. The core wounds. We become our own best nurturer by enlisting the loving guidance of our Higher Self, or Higher Power, whatever your personal spiritual belief is. When we begin to view ourselves through the all loving lens of this benevolent higher consciousness, this story that we are “unlovable” or “not good enough” or “not beautiful enough” is held with love until it transforms. Sometimes forgiveness work is involved, sometimes a process of soul retrieval.
We can get creative and passionate in this self-healing as we learn the life enhancing benefits of weaving self-care and self-nurturing into our lives. Life becomes more meaningful as soul expressive activities such as dancing, gardening, painting, playing a musical instrument, singing, writing, become part of our weekly or daily self care practices. Morning and/or evening rituals of meditation and journaling, breath-work, or prayer can become the catalyst for healing core wounds and breaking out of negative thought patterns such as self doubt, low self esteem, or victim mentality.
What I am describing is a path of continuous awakening and growth, one that our own soul is longing for us to embrace. And I am here to mentor you, to empower you, to connect you to your own Higher Self, that wise inner voice that is always with you, like a guardian angel, guiding you to heal, to be guided by love, and to be in service for the better good of all.
In love and light,
Christine Dufond, MA
Marriage and Family Therapist #53645
(707)483-8232
[email protected]