Our Approach
What would you do for your family, for your child, for your loved one? And how would you do it?
Fiercely, with compassion, support, knowledge, and a combination of wisdom, strength, and deep beliefs.
We treat those who come to us as we would treat our own family. That’s why The Vault is the foundation of our practice, it represents our commitment to safety, confidentiality, and deep care. It symbolizes how we handle your story, your information, and your emotional pain.
We look beyond surface-level distress to understand the root of the issues that have come to light. Using the Circle of Security’s stance of being Bigger, Stronger, Wiser, and Kinder, we walk alongside our clients as they process pain, understand unmet needs, and move toward meaningful change.
Our goal is to always lead with compassion and prioritize the therapeutic relationship. Research consistently shows that the therapeutic alliance is the most important predictor of success in therapy. That’s why we begin by building a relationship where it feels safe for clients to access their own awareness, self-regulation, growth, and healing potential.
For many, the therapy relationship may be the first time they’ve truly been listened to deeply, by someone nonjudgmental and caring.
What & who informs our work . . .
Our Theoretical Framework.
A Humanistic-Experiential and Client-Centered Approach
The humanistic-experiential and client-centered approach is characterized by its emphasis on an empathically attuned therapeutic relationship, in-session experiencing, a belief in the inherent capacity for human reflection, and the fundamental goodness of people. This approach supports self-growth and self-actualization (Greenberg, Elliott, & Lietaer, 2003). Humanistic psychology rejects the medical or "sickness" model and instead embraces a growth-oriented model of healing.
Client-centered therapy is grounded in the belief that individuals are capable of directing their own lives. For Carl Rogers, empathy is central to therapeutic change. He argued that empathy must be the pathway to change, as a more direct route is ineffective. This belief underpins his well-known non-directive approach to therapy (Rogers, 1951).
In client-centered therapy, the therapist's role is to create an environment that fosters personal growth and introspection. Rogers (1957) identified three core conditions that are both necessary and sufficient for therapeutic change: congruence, unconditional positive regard, and empathic understanding.
Humanistic-experiential therapy emphasizes the importance of the therapeutic relationship as a genuine encounter between two human beings—therapist and client. This relationship serves to deepen the client’s experience and promote integrative self-reorganization. The therapist strives to provide understanding, acceptance, warmth, and authenticity. Over time, the client is encouraged to internalize this attitude toward themselves through relational reciprocity.
As Rogers (1961) noted, “The more the individual is understood and accepted, the more he tends to drop the false fronts with which he has been meeting life, and the more he tends to move in a direction which is forward” (p. 27). Since many psychological difficulties arise from unconscious defense mechanisms that obscure the true sources of distress, a positive therapeutic relationship enables clients to become more open to examining these defenses. This can lead to greater awareness of their needs and result in more congruent alignment between their actions, goals, and desires.
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Greenberg, L., Elliott, R., & Lietaer, G. (2003). Humanistic-experiential psychotherapy. In G. Stricker, T. A. Widiger, & I. B. Weiner (Eds.), Handbook of psychology: Clinical psychology (Vol. 8, pp. 301–325). John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Rogers, C. R. (1951). Client-centered therapy: Its current practice, implications, and theory. Houghton Mifflin.
Rogers, C. R. (1957). The necessary and sufficient conditions of therapeutic personality change. Journal of Consulting Psychology, 21(2), 95–103.
Rogers, C. R. (1961). On becoming a person. Houghton Mifflin.
“In my early professional years I was asking the questions, How can I treat or cure, or change this person? Now I would phrase the question in this way: How can I provide a relationship which this person may use for his own personal growth?”
— Carl Rogers, On Becoming a Person