Tel: 919-771-9285
About Kerry
I personally believe that we are here to help one another.
Therapy for Non-Conformists
and Critical Thinkers
(And while we’re at it, this includes free spirits, outliers, empaths, creatives, introverts, rebels, misfits, gypsies, vagabonds, etc. In other words, anyone who sees life differently than what our culture endorses.)
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Do you feel like you don’t fit in here? That this culture is no longer hospitable to those who have a heart, a soul and a deeply thinking brain? Do you ever feel that maybe something is wrong with the way that life has been structured on this planet and that it leaves you feeling sucked dry just to participate in this world? If you do, I get you.
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Between all the institutions that are trying to tell you what to believe, what to value, how to think, what life is supposed to look like, what our role is here, etc. it hardly leaves much room for one to decide for themselves.
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And if you think outside the box and challenge the norms, then you risk being seen as “different”, which for most of us can be terrifying. For if we are different, we risk not being accepted. Conformity has its benefits, but it also comes at a very high price.
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Because when we are trying to conform and “fit in”, in essence we are pretending. We are wearing a mask. When we wear a mask, we are sending our soul a message that we are not acceptable the way that we ARE. Nothing, absolutely nothing, is harder on the soul than feeling you are not good enough, worthy enough, the way that you are. And our soul responds in pain.
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The pain that comes from not feeling we are okay the way that we are is one of the most powerfully difficult feelings there is.
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Our culture is not known for its emotional depth. In fact, it has become rather unfashionable to even admit to having feelings here. If you have one of those pesky feelings that are not “allowed”, like grief, sadness, fear, I’m sure we have a pill for that.
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I am writing all of this because I can relate to how hard it can be to feel “different”. I know how hard it is when we take a risk and reveal what we think, how we feel, who we are and we get rejected.
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This culture does not celebrate diversity. This culture is not built on love and acceptance and inclusivity. This culture does not operate from a place of emotional depth and understanding. This culture is built on achievement, superficiality, and competition.
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And all we have to do is look at the rising rates of depression and suicide, and we can see how that is working out for everyone.
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I have chosen to specialize in working with this population because I am in this population. I challenge the stories that I have been told about everything. I have been willing to peer behind the curtain, to take a deep dive into the psychiatric literature. This has led to many “dark nights of the soul." For when we have found the truth to be in direct conflict with the story we have been told, the story that everyone else believes, that people rely on, that comes from “authority figures” who we feel we should be able to trust, it makes people really uncomfortable. Hence WE make people really uncomfortable.
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If you are also one of these types of people, you will always find acceptance here, and an understanding of what it takes to make peace with that.
So Who Am I?
Finding a partner in the therapeutic process can be a daunting task. Unless we have a trusted friend who can refer us to someone they have worked with, we are left reading composite snapshots from professional websites. I have found most to be rather formal and stuffy and not too revealing into the personality of the therapist.
But finding someone to help you who is a good match for your personality is essential.
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So who am I?
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I am an open minded, critically thinking mass of 50 trillion carbon-based cells just trying to sort out what it means to be human. Twenty years working as a counselor in many different settings with an incredibly diverse population of people has taught me so much more than I ever learned in school. Fifty-four years of navigating this incredibly dynamic and mysterious thing we call life has taught me even more. I personally believe that we are here to help one another. And this is my aim to do just that.
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I am an empath, an introvert and a free thinker. I have often challenged the rules, because so many of them don’t make much sense to me. I like to color outside the lines, and explore ideas. I guess I could say that I am stubborn, and willful and notoriously tenacious. Giving up has never been an option, but I have been tempted at times.
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But I am also deeply reverent of life, people, animals and the planet. I believe that being human on this planet right now requires a responsibility to help one another, to support one another, and lift one another up. I see signs of suffering all around me in the faces and the bodies of the people in my community, in the rising numbers of suicides and antidepressant prescriptions.
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I am deeply concerned with this trend to turn the human experience into a medical diagnosis to then be treated with a psychotropic medication. We now have so many people taking antidepressants, etc. that these compounds are present in our ground water, soil samples and wildlife. Houston, we have a problem.
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And the message that the public, as well as those in my own field, get is that these chemical compounds are helping people; that they are targeted therapies to address a chemically based brain issue. Neither of these is true.
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I feel compelled to share what I have learned in my time while sitting with hundreds of people working as a counselor as so many trends have emerged that have been valuable lessons to me. I am equally inspired to share what life has taught me, as my own road has not been an easy one. I have found sharing the various tools and coping strategies that have emerged from those experiences to be enormously helpful to myself and to my clients.
I am far from perfect and don’t fancy myself an authority, a guru, or “an expert” at anything. I think we should be wary of those who do.
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I have felt since I was a little girl that helping people would be my life’s work. It escaped me for a while, and then I guess the Universe, Spirit, God, whatever you want to call it, kept nudging me back in this direction. Through some of the most incredible, life changing experiences, I learned that we have so much more power than we realize to create a life of health, elevate our moods and ultimately I got the message that I was being shown something for a reason.
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And that reason is to help lift as many others out of suffering as I possibly can.