“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two substances: If there is any reaction, both are transformed.” C.G. Jung
My journey in becoming a psychotherapist has not followed the conventional straight line; just the way life often seems to happen. Our individual path unfolds sometimes quite unexpectedly. It is important to know when to let go and trust or to recognize and overcome various obstacles that can deter us from attaining our fullest potential. My training as a clinical social worker began 20 years ago working with adolescents and families in outpatient treatment for dual diagnosis and developmental life challenges. During this time I raised a family while also discovering innovative clinical interventions founded in the theory of attachment. In 2013, I participated in the first cohort ever to study Integrative Regulation Therapy (IRT); a neurobiological evidence informed brain-based scaffolding developed by Dr. Newton for clinical assessment and intervention. This innovative approach to psychodynamic therapy is designed to focus on emotional security in children, adults, couples, and families of all ages. Interventions include how to recognize and work with unhealthy relational entrainment patterns, the unique languages of the cerebral hemispheres, and autonomic nervous system arousal ranges, using clinical instinct, voice prosody, affect, and gesture for a whole-body/mind clinical change. It is no surprise now, as I embrace my midlife years, that I find myself coming full circle to my early undergraduate days when I first discovered the profound works of Carl Gustav Jung. My career path continues to parallel the developmental stages of the life cycle. As a Jungian Analyst in training, I am now able to bring a depth perspective to the psyche that, as life experience reveals, is required during mid-life and beyond to expand consciousness by following the energy of the psyche in leading us toward its desired goal of personal individuation.