Leif Griffin

I am a relational therapist, which means that I value above all else the power of relationships to bring about healing. The includes relationships with others, relationships to our families, our cultural background, to societal ideals, and most importantly to ourselves. All of us come into the world dependent upon relationships to survive and ultimately to thrive. Many of us had to make harmful compromises in order to remain connected with loved ones early on and throughout our lives. Our inner sense of having made a particular painful compromise can often be signaled to us by experiences such as anxiety, depression, or by behaviors such as substance use, lashing out or shutting down. I integrate different trauma-informed therapy approaches (also known as theoretical orientations) in my work, including mindfulness based approaches, parts-work, attachment-based therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy and humanistic/existential therapy. I am not only focused on symptom reduction. My belief and my experience is that focusing on self-understanding--why we act the way that we do, why we are triggered by what we are--can lead to seeing beneath the symptoms to our unmet, and often, unseen needs that the symptoms are trying to alert us to. These are the voices from the parts of us that had to make painful compromises early on and throughout our lives. When we start working on this level with ourselves, we often can begin to experience more agency and deeper feelings of purpose.