Be More at Ease in Your Life
In-person therapy in San Francisco and San Mateo | Online for anyone in California
Be More at Ease in Your Life
In-person therapy in San Francisco and San Mateo | Online for anyone in California
Change Your Mind
Being a human is hard.
A mind that is constantly narrating, judging and planning. A nervous system that remembers trauma indefinitely. The ability to imagine the worst possible scenario as if it were real. Unworkable habits that become extremely hard to break. An internal world that -- through no fault of your own -- can become a battlefield.
Ironically, all this is a byproduct of your system trying to keep you safe. These highly evolved survival mechanisms are often at odds with demands of modern life, the weight of the expectations placed on us, and the complexity of our relationships.
The result? Awful symptoms we call anxiety, depression, PTSD, addiction, eating disorders, ...
If that rings true, let me assure you: none of this is your fault, though you are absolutely the best person to do something about it. You can choose to step towards the life you want to have. My job is to help you walk in that direction.
The good news
Pain is inevitable, but suffering is actually avoidable.
We get sick, people harm us, we harm others, we grieve the loss of people we love -- this kind of pain (and much more) is part of every human life.
Suffering on the other hand, is something you can learn to encounter less and less. This is a practice, like learning to play an instrument (though I am not saying it's easy). Those overwhelming experiences of stress, anxiety, anger, depression are the result of our well-meaning survival systems tying themselves in a knot, and often, in a diabolical loop.
In Buddhism they say it this way: pain is the arrow fired by someone else, suffering is the arrow we fire at ourselves.
Untie the knots
My job is to help you learn the practice of suffering less. The 'you' in that sentence is not just your thoughts and feelings, it includes your whole nervous system, your automatic responses, your baked-in neural circuits, your ability to choose actions, your awesome and mysterious ability to be aware of what's happening to you and be pulled around by it.
Nowadays, we have extremely effective ways to work on these knots. Talk therapy helps bring about change through our conscious processing systems (our most recently evolved apparatus). Somatic therapies (like Brainspotting) help change the way our nervous system reacts to the world (our most ancient apparatus). Quick and dramatic results come from using both approaches together.
It’s very hard to change the world, but you can quickly change how you operate in it. Significant and lasting relief is available to you starting now.
Get in touch
No therapist is a perfect fit for everyone. The best way to find out if we should work together is to have a quick video meeting
Click below to schedule a free 20 min consultation where we can get to know each other a little bit.
If I'm not the right fit for you, I might have some suggestions of other therapists you could try.
Chris Jinks - APCC#21845 - Supervised By Hannah Stutz - LCSW#99116
San Francisco, San Mateo and Online