LAURIE SPIES, MA

Do you desire a deep sense of well-being, goodness, and peace but find those experiences are elusive? No matter how hard you try, you feel anxious, angry, disconnected from the people you love, distant from your own emotions, paralyzed, and exhausted with all the effort.

I help people improve their relationships with themselves, God, and other people by examining the patterns that keep us stuck. We are so close to our own experiences and feelings, that we often can’t see the full picture.  Working together, we can zoom out to see more clearly what is going on. When we do that, we find we have more options, more freedom, and more opportunity to flourish.

I don’t believe in quick fixes. But I do believe by examining the stories we tell ourselves - the ways we have come to understand how life works and doesn’t - we can begin to recognize why we experience life and relationships the way we do. We can begin to tell a truer story, and when we can do that, we begin to see we have far more options available to us to live wholeheartedly than we have known before. I create safe, spaces full of curiosity and warmth for adults one-on-one and in groups. 

MY BACKGROUND AND APPROACH

I graduated from Southern Nazarene University with a Master of Arts in Counseling and have further trauma/related training from the Allender Center at the Seattle School of Theology and Psychology. I bring over 30 years of experience in the public and private sectors and a wealth of life and relationship experience to the counseling space. I welcome people of all faith backgrounds, or none, and enjoy bringing Christian faith into the conversation for those who share it.  

While creating an individualized plan for clients, I see growth through Psychodynamic, Attachment, Narrative, Trauma-focused, and Relational lenses and utilize many of their interventions in therapy.

After therapy with me, my clients are aware of how their past experiences have formed their current patterns. They are able to recognize their triggers and choose an alternative response. Clients can recognize their emotions without becoming overwhelmed by them. My clients are better able to set appropriate boundaries in relationships without the guilt of letting someone down. They are willing to lean into relational conflict, when necessary while maintaining awareness of their own needs and desires. Overall, this leaves clients with a deep sense of peace, not that they will never experience triggers, but that they can handle it when they do.