Oh hi!
I’m Dave Hires. I’m a licensed professional counselor in the state of Oregon. I specialize in therapy for addiction and trauma. I am trained in Internal Family Systems (IFS) and Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing (EMDR).
Do you experience intense distress in a way that is hard to predict or understand? Are you concerned about the things you do to when you feel that distress? My training has focused on methods that produce lasting change beyond that of traditional talk therapy alone.
I provide individual therapy to adults both in-person at my office in Tigard, or via Telehealth. For insurance, I can bill OHP open card, Aetna & Moda. If this sounds good so far, message me to set up a free 15 minute consultation and we will go from there.
Mark Rothko. (1949). Untitled.
What are we doing?
After 14 years working in mental health, I have been exposed to a lot of kinds of therapy. Often, the work is centered around pushing against our unpleasant or seemingly unreasonable thoughts and feelings. We call them "cognitive distortions", we try to reframe them, argue with them, cope our way out of them.
There is a time and place for this approach. With my clients I often talk about present tense and past tense. We don't always have the time, energy, or safety required to work on the past. I am skilled at helping clients establish a baseline of safety and stability with skills that we can use right now to survive the present.
However, we also know that a lot of our present struggles are rooted in how we learned to be in the past. As the beginning and ending of one's mental health treatment, just focusing on the present never felt like enough for me (or for my clients). It became clear to me that we need deeper, lasting healing.
Wassily Kandinsky. (1923). Black and Violet
EMDR
Instead of scrambling to cope with our triggers, what if our triggers got quieter?
I am trained in EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing), which over the course of 40 years has amassed one of the most robust bodies of evidence demonstrating its efficacy. I have seen radical change in myself and my clients. Reminders both internal (thoughts, emotions) or external (people, situations) that, in the past, would have set us on a spiral simply become less interesting.
Sometimes, especially for those experiencing the frequent wounding of identity-based discrimination, there can be value in keeping our guard up and being vigilant. But often traumatic experiences, cruelly, tend to leave us more vulnerable to future trauma. With EMDR, we can find a level of relief, confidence and groundedness that many don’t find just by talking. This can leave us better equipped to self-advocate, to connect with our peers and work with a larger community toward justice.
Helen Frankthaler. (1967). Flood
Internal Family Systems (IFS)
“When children feel pervasively angry or guilty or are chronically frightened about being abandoned, they have come by such feelings honestly”
(Van der Kolk, “The Body Keeps the Score”, 2015, p. 159)
If a crying child approaches you, how might they respond if you tell them they’re over-reacting?
Would they be confused, ashamed, angry? Maybe they would get quiet and then lash out later. Maybe the child would simply cry louder, because clearly you didn't get it the first time.
Instead, maybe you stay with the child and try to understand it. Maybe you let them know that whatever they were feeling, it makes sense. What might happen then?
I am trained in Internal Family Systems (IFS) which states that our internal life operates this way. When we argue with ourselves or try to control our big feelings, they don't actually go anywhere. They either don’t change at all, or they come out sideways with impulsive & out of control behavior, addiction, depression, or self-loathing.
It might seem paradoxical or counterintuitive, and it is definitely against the norm of Euro-American culture, but when we give attention to those parts, especially the wounded, the destructive, the unpleasant, or the seemingly irrational, they relax a little. Those parts of ourselves realize they are part of a unit. They feel less compelled to take over because they can trust your self to take care of things. The urge to act in ways we regret and are perplexed by subsides and is replaced by a profound relief, a long-awaited sense of connection within ourselves.
What do you think?
Send me a message using the below form and we can set up a free 15 minute consultation.