Working Together

The Gestalt approach to therapy is existential and humanistic: it holds that humans, being natural and biological, are ecosystems just like those in the rest of the natural world, but our natural process and flow gets blocked due to the world we live in (trauma, the families we’re raised in, our experiences, systems that oppress us, e.g.). While we creatively adapt to our environments, and do it well, our adaptations eventually start working against us, keeping us from closeness with others, blocking out important inner sensations, and disconnecting us from our core sense of self and flow with life.

This adaptive loss of self-contact and disconnection with our natural process can lead to anxiety, depression, and other imbalances that bring individuals to therapy, as well the inability to express emotional/attachment needs and boundaries that can complicate personal relationships and bring couples to therapy. It’s my passion to provide a space where imbalances can unravel and reorganize, and clients can reconnect to their core selves (e.g., sensations, emergent needs, inner knowing).

Working together, we’ll explore and move through stuck areas, blockages, or unfinished processes, clearing the way for more easefulness, choice, flow, and aliveness. We’ll create safety to move through what’s no longer serving you, making way for expressions of self, such as clarifying your boundaries and voicing your needs. This can be slow work, or clients at times tell me they have a new experience in a single session that changes them instantly and they’re never the same.

In my experience, traditional cognitive talk therapy is missing the kind of whole-brain integration and lasting change that more somatic, awareness-based, and experiential therapies offer. The great potential for change in here-and-now experiential work is what drew me to the approach, and what I hope to facilitate for my clients.

While my work is heavily influenced by my training in Gestalt, as an integral therapist I also pull from a variety of other approaches, like Internal Family Systems (IFS), Somatic Experiencing, as well as and Somatic, Systems-based and Emotionally-Focused Therapy (EFT) for couples. Read more about how I work with couples.

More about Gestalt Therapy: Intro to Gestalt on GoodTherapy.
More about Internal Family Systems (IFS): Intro to IFS on GoodTherapy.

“I came to therapy feeling like I was living a life in servitude of everyone but myself and I was seeking to change parts of myself that I did not like – what felt like an inability to hold boundaries or control my emotions and sometimes, my behaviors. Amick’s approach integrated several modalities that supported me on my path to awareness, understanding, self-love, and change. By the end of our time together, I developed a love for, understanding of, and acceptance of all of the parts of myself, including the ones I came to therapy seeking to change. I can better hold boundaries, I have choice around how I express my emotions, and while I still am a helper, I live life for myself now, not only in service of others. The best part is that the change came from a place of love, not shame.”

My Interests and Specializations Include:

Highly sensitive people and healers
Artists and creatives
Effects of female-identified or assigned-female-at-birth socialization
Effects of systemic race and gender-based oppression, ableism, heterosexism
Feeling fragmented or unable to find your voice or choice
Clients who caretake, need boundary support, have difficulty saying “no”
Life transitions and difficult growth processes
Infertility and pregnancy loss, reproductive choices (including abortion), childlessness
Family-of-origin trauma and attachment wounding
Couples Therapy (EFT, Somatic, Systems, and Gestalt approaches)
Explorations of identity (gender, sexuality, race, e.g., and how these positionalities intersect)
History of childhood emotional neglect (when caregivers fail to adequately respond to emotional needs as they arise in you)

Loss, change, and the unknown
Desire for more aliveness in and connection to your body
Depression (numbness, stuck-ness, lack of enjoyment)
Anxiety (chronic stress, fear, and worry)
Adult sand tray and other creative projective processes (in-person sessions only)
Relationship questions, relationship endings
Support for preserving vitality in hierarchical corporate and/or tech work environments
Feeling misaligned with work or a general lack of meaning
Explorations of spirituality and meaning
Eco-psychology (reconnecting to the wisdom and patterns of the natural world for guidance, resourcing, and healing)
Co-dependency (Making yourself smaller to accommodate others who may be unpredictable or have substance use issues)
Living with chronic pain, chronic illness, or autoimmune conditions