I work with adult and senior clients.  Virtual weekly 60-75 minute sessions work best.

Location: King County, WA
Phone: (253) 426-5131
Fax: 253-276-4646
Email: c4g.janet@pm.me
(A reminder: please do not send personal information via email.)

Janet Kurz, MA, LMHC

Counseling For Growth

Going through difficult situations causes uncomfortable sensations in our body that make us want to move away from those situations.  As infants, in order to survive, we need people to help us meet our basic need for food, fluids, the comfort of our body, and loving relationships.  If those needs are met, we learn to accept the distressing feelings in our body, with gentleness, like our caretakers show to us.  If those needs are not met, or met without loving attention, we suffer and learn to fear uncomfortable sensations of the body.  All body sensations are reactions to something and they contain important information.  Feeling sensations in a mindful way, helps information move from the body and limbic system over to the left brain.  When you do not get the information from sensations, the mind comes up with illogical beliefs about you, and triggers in the present moment can bring back little videotapes of the original distressing images, emotions, and body sensations that you experienced in the past.  These little videotapes that play are weird, too.  You don't realize they are happening, but all of a sudden when you are triggered, you are having unpleasant and unexpected changes in emotions, thoughts, or feelings about yourself.

My goal in therapy is to help you slowly learn how to feel sensations in a non-judgmental and interested way, so that the information in the sensations can pass over to your left brain and be processed.  This leads to you developing helpful insights about your situation or past and finding new ways to deal with it. 

Mindfulness is not easy to do when you have had to block sensations for whatever reason.  I will do very careful supervised mindfulness with you, so that you will be able to eventually learn how to feel, even the strongest sensations in a helpful way. This is not something I expect you to go right home and do by yourself.  It takes time and there are parts of you that are afraid and need help and assistance.

Developmental Needs Meeting Strategy was developed by Shirley Jean Schmidt, MA, LPC. It is a powerful therapy for deep healing. Visit the DNMS Institute website to read what therapists and clients have to say about this form of therapy.

Accelerated Dynamic Experiential Psychotherapy was developed by Diana Fosha, Ph.D.  Visit https://aedpinstitute.org/about-aedp/  to learn more about AEDP.

Vivation is a form of mindfulness that was developed by Jim Leonard.

Unwanted emotions, thoughts, and behaviors are often the result of unmet childhood needs and can be the basis of many of the following diagnoses: depression, anxiety, panic disorder, social phobia, substance abuse, complex PTSD, relationship problems, obsessions/compulsions, sexual abuse, eating disorders, dissociative disorders, borderline personality disorder, sexual addiction, and complicated grief.

Thank you