Counseling Works Santa Cruz
Santa Cruz, California, Santa Cruz
Santa Cruz, California, Santa Cruz
I am the Supervising Psychotherapist of a private practice located in downtown Santa Cruz, including 4 therapists - myself, Shana Trinchero, Goeff Ashmun and Judy Patton. We share about 31 years of experience. We all offer caring, responsive, effective psychotherapy, counseling and life and career coaching.
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What do you love most about your job?
Psychotherapy is by far the least boring thing one can do, and at the same time one of the most caring services one can offer another person. We meet the person “where they are” with whatever personality they have and issues that are troubling her or him — so the client can feel completely free in the session to express and be just who they are, without feeling any judgment or fear. Many people have hardly ever really been seen or heard, so at the very least, we must be great listeners, who will make you feel validated and understood. Beyond that, we have a responsibility to help you confront the tough contradictions, confusions and neurotic patterns that plague you (ad all of us) and sometimes that will mean that you will be grateful that from time to time, we “take you on”
and help you face some things within yourself that you’ve avoided facing in the past, but that’s often how growth and healing happens. One of our slogans is “The only way out is through” and that’s one thing we love about the healing process — that if it’s done with care and courage, including facing the tough stuff, such as your own mistakes in a marriage or relationship (not just your partners!), or opportunities you’ve missed seeing in your own life, work and friendship circle, we know we can help you find ways to move forward with a whole bunch of new vision, courage, ease, joy, fun and creativity. There are SO many things
we all love about this kind of work, and we can’t imagine doing anything else with our hearts and minds, except helping you heal in body, heart, mind and spirit.
What inspired you to start your own business?
Frankly, I was very, very, very tired of dealing with uninspiring and often incompetent supervisors in my prior work in a county mental health agency up in Butte County (Chico/Oroville/Paradise) where I worked for way too long a time (18 years). After leading a reform effort to improve the agency, which largely succeeded, I realized it had always been to hot up there, and I chose to “retire” to the wonderful beach-coast of Santa Cruz, where I’d actually lived earlier in my life. Furthermore, though I’ve never taught therapy in a master’s program, I knew I’d enjoy passing on some wisdom and consulting with smart colleagues such as my three great Associates, Shana, Geoff and Judy.
Why should our clients choose you?
Clients should choose us because we’re deeply caring, honest, bright, self-aware, fairly humble and quite insightful people. We all do a pretty great job of communicating with our clients, not just in words, but in attitude, and hearing them out, so it is very unlikely you will feel ignored, talked down to or mistreated due to arrogance. Besides, we all have pretty good senses of humor, so our sessions include some skiing, laughing and joy, as well as solace and support for all those “heavy” moments of sharing deep and vulnerable stuff. Finally, we all also have fairly rich spiritual lives, so we can invite your spirituality to express itself along with your psyche and unique personality.
