NBCC NATIONALLY CERTIFIED COUNSELOR. AASECT CERTIFIED SEX THERAPIST.
COUPLES & INDIVIDUAL THERAPY.
Jamie holds her therapy credentials in: CALIFORNIA - WASHINGTON - TEXAS - UTAH - IDAHO - ARIZONA - FLORIDA
DIFFERENTIATION RELATIONSHIP THERAPY
COUPLES - INDIVIDUALS - FAMILIES - SIBLINGS - PARENT/ADULT CHILD - FRIENDS
Maturing out of validation-dependence is necessary to develop solidity, flexibility, freedom and desire.
Learning how to validate yourself and stabilize yourself and calm your reactivity (or under reactivity) is the pathway to more maturity and ability to connect with yourself and your partner on much deeper levels. Brain science shows it’s MUCH easier to see your partner’s limitations, reactivity, superiority, avoidance, and going to a victim position and making you out to be the bad guy than seeing with clear eyes what you’re doing that is creating more pain and difficulty for yourself and your relationship.
Validation is wonderful when it is genuine and freely given. The problem becomes when you are dependent on your partner’s (or parent’s, or children’s, family member’s, or friend’s) validation. If you are dependent on others thinking well of you, or agreeing with your choices, you will either attempt to get them to change their mind and convince them out of their beliefs, something manipulative or emotionally aggressive, conform to do what they want as to earn their approval, or to withdraw. Emotional aggression can be subtle, but it’s intended to impact the other person - to hurt them or guilt them into doing what you want them to do. People want to belong to themselves and don’t like being controlled or pushed. Having your own mind, thoughts and beliefs and knowing how to calm yourself down when others don’t validate you is part of maturing.
Growing in your relationships means maturing yourself first, and living into who you want to be without justifications or excuses. What you DO shows you what you most want. And how you do it, and the meanings attached are critical to how you think and feel about yourself and others. Lots of people have sex to manage their partner, not because they want and appreciate them. Lots of people feel like they can withhold the warmth and tenderness of sex because of what their partner is doing. Is your partner responsible for what YOU choose to do? Nope. Maturing takes growing in self-responsibility, looking honestly at what you are building, and learning what muscles you need to strengthen. Some people need to grow a backbone and not tolerate demeaning behavior, and need to look at how they use “being honest” as a club. Some people blame their partner for their own reactivity, rather than take full responsibility for themselves and learn to settle themselves down. My job is to assess what muscles you need to develop in yourself to mature - perhaps it’s letting your partner in to what is angering you, or looking at how you feel entitled to your partner’s body, or how you go through the motions and offer heart-less sex rather than heart-full sex. There’s many things you may be doing that are impeding your growth - and negatively impacting your partner, and thus your relationship.
Compassionate Self-Confrontation is the pathway towards freedom, choice, and growth. Being honest with yourself is difficult, but you become freer when you do.
Self-confrontation means looking at your actions and the way you interact with yourself and others to learn things about yourself. Sometimes the things you learn are difficult to tolerate, but it is in the clearly seeing that you have real choice - and the freedom to challenge and change yourself from the best in you - the place that desires to grow, develop and BECOME. It’s much easier to see what other people are up to - to know what they want - rather than to see yourself clearly and to be compassionately honest with yourself. You can grow any relationship you are in by becoming more emotionally regulated (more able to calm your heart and mind and challenge yourself first) and grounded in yourself.
Meet Your Therapist
Jamie Abenroth has a Masters Degree of Counseling Psychology from The Seattle School, is a Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor, an AASECT Certified Sex Therapist, a Nationally Certified Counselor board certified by NBCC, and is a Certified Integrated Intimacy Practitioner through the Northwest Institute On Intimacy. She’s trained in The Crucible Approach developed by Dr. David Schnarch and Dr. Ruth Morehouse since 2015. Dr. Schnarch’s seminal works: Resurrecting Sex, Passionate Marriage, Intimacy & Desire and Brain Talk help bring the work of self development, decency and integrity into relief by detailing other couples issues and the way through.
Jamie meets virtually with couples and individuals in the following states: Washington, California, Florida, Texas, Arizona, Utah and Idaho. If you’d like to see the details of her practice (hours, fees, out of network, online, etc.) check out the Therapy Sessions & Fees tab above. After clicking the tab, scroll down the page and you’ll find important details there. To schedule a session now, click on the Contact tab above. JAMIE IS CURRENTLY ACCEPTING NEW CLIENTS.
I’m a Certified Sex Therapist because intimacy and embodiment are an important and personal part of each person. Often people do not think their sensuality, embodiment (trusting your gut), or arousal are life-giving energies in their lives and thus people often cut themselves off from the wholeness of themselves, believing these aspects are shameful, less than or wrong. Embodiment is about experiencing and letting into your heart and body joy and pleasure; being open to sights, tastes, smells, sounds, and touches. It certainly isn’t easy to be open, because when you consider letting yourself, for example, really be held in another person’s arms and relaxing, you also intuitively will only relax if you believe you are someone worthy of being held, a valuable, unique human being worthy of care and love. You also must give that other person freedom to choose what they will do - as love and desire are about freedom and not possession.
Clients come to me for help with
wanting a healthier sexual relationship with themselves or with a partner
to feel more alive
understanding and alleviating sexual pain in their relationship
to find a healthy way out of defensiveness and criticism
to stop escalation of fighting or withdrawing
wanting to sort through their concerns about intimacy and sexuality
learning to trust their own inner voice
infidelity
issues of broken trust and desire to build trust
learning to be more honest and intimate
co-parenting
wanting support and validation from their partner
manipulation, gas-lighting, and being pressured in a relationship
sexual dysfunctions
different levels of emotional and sexual desire between partners
processing abusive relationships or past traumas
communication issues
talking in circles, unproductive conflict
co-dependency
wanting to mature sexually and intimately
processing relational traumas from the present and from the past
anxiety and panic
grief - a loss of something important
decrease in sexual desire
being unsure if their sexual fantasies are normal or healthy
difficulty being present while being sexual
having difficulty soothing their emotions and thoughts - getting reactive, defensive, attacking emotionally OR shutting down and withdrawing
Dr. David Schnarch, a mentor and teacher I hold dear, shared with a group of his students learning his therapeutic approach that the greatest respect you can offer a client is to tell them directly and honestly what you see them doing even if it is difficult for the client. I am guided by this principle: that your time, your resources, and your life are important - and I am going to step in quickly with you to help you face your challenges head on. And, I am usually kind.
I treat relationship and sexual issues with compassion, directness, and honesty. If I see something problematic in the way you are relating, I am going to confront it right there. We’re going deep, and we’re going for the heart of your issues. I work with clients to push them towards self-development, towards greater resilience, and towards defining and living out of their personal responsibilities and personal values.
True peace, personal integrity, and safety come through a commitment to be honest with yourself and those you hold dear, even though it may change the picture that you and others have held about you. The reality is, you have solid ground to stand on when you get real. Even though it’s difficult to face less admirable aspects of yourself and let others in on it, your self respect grows.
A solid sense of self develops from confronting yourself, challenging yourself to do what’s right, and earning your own self-respect.
― Dr. David Schnarch, Passionate Marriage
Couples Therapy
A key change occurs in couple's therapy when you look less at your partner and LOOK MORE AT YOURSELF. Do you like and respect YOURSELF? Don't think about your partner for a moment. If you think about how you are currently operating in your life, what do you notice? Do you like how you treat people, especially those closest to you? How much does your partner really know you? How much can you tolerate, at this point, being seen by them, and possibly yourself?
I treat couples from a non-pathological approach, which means that I believe sexual difficulties in relationships are normal and that long-term relationships, in particular, increase the pressure on individuals to mature and develop. That doesn't mean harmful relational patterns aren't occurring in your relationship; often they are. Issues of selfhood (the need to differentiate) and issues of attachment (the need to connect with others) are well at work in your relationship. This is how we grow - through a process of being in a relationship long enough that we are being seen at increasingly deeper levels. We're being known more, and can't hide the undesirable aspects of ourselves as easily.
Likely you have relived the same patterns and the same conversations over and over. This is where I come in. Having me address your relationship dynamics can help stop your dynamic mid-stream and highlight undercurrents that you may be missing. I see it as my job to bring all of what is going on between you to light; and to talk about it openly in our therapeutic work together so you can make the most informed decisions possible for yourselves. And if you're willing to operate differently and be honest from an open place in yourself, you can choose a whole new way of being, right now. Basically, you're choosing being known over self-protection. What this means is that to tolerate intimacy, you need to become more grounded in yourself and more honest. I can help you do that. You are responsible for you from the strongest place inside of you. That strong place is what I'm speaking to in therapy with you.
I work with individuals and couples of all genders, am sex-positive (consensual, wanted, non-coercive experiences) and LGBTQI affirming.
Sex & Intimacy Therapy
SEX THERAPY can help you as an individual or a couple:
feel more at home in your body and mind, and at peace with yourself
address disconnected, dissatisfying sex
increase your sexual desire
understand and work to change sexual dysfunction
address sexual desire discrepancy between you and your partner
understand and change sexual boredom
increase your individual sexual agency
explore your eroticism (what makes you feel alive)
learn to express your eroticism to your partner
Sex therapy is psychotherapy from a trained professional who has experience working with patients around sexual issues. Sexuality is expansive and involves all of you, although often Americans think of sex as hetero-normative intercourse. It simply isn't so isolated or limited. EMBODIED PRESENCE in life increases your aliveness in that you are more in tune with the sensual, with your senses, and that which feels enlivening to you. You can tap into all of you, which makes sexuality - being alive in your body - absolutely powerful!
GOOD SEX GETS PERSONAL
Sexual wholeness (when your heart, mind, spirit, and body are engaged, present, and cared for by yourself) is not celebrated nor treasured in American culture; rather, sexuality is more generally sectioned off from the whole person, exploited and also considered shameful. These extremes miss the truth about sexuality: it is a portal into being and understanding yourself on a very personal level.
Intimacy in sex has more to do with revealing new aspects of yourself to your partner. It's less about specific areas of your body, and more about being known and seen by an important person to you - and living into new meanings and aspects of yourself that you are wanting to experience. Connected sex is powerful and often you have to grow the capacity to tolerate really being seen!Very few people grow up with solid comprehensive sexual health information or have role models or mentors who teach them about relational, emotional and sexual health in long-term relationships. Sexual difficulties and losing desire are normal parts of relationship development - this is often more a signal of dependence on your partner’s validation rather than making a choice for yourself than it is about hormones and sex drive: sex has much more to do with the meanings that you and your partner are passing back and forth to one another. And not wanting sex is often a sign of good judgment! My job is to help you unpack the meanings that currently exist in your sex life, or lack thereof, and create an opening for you to build the kind of relationship and intimacy that you really want.
Relationship difficulties and sexual issues are normal and you are not broken nor is your partner. So many people think they are broken when in fact what their bodies are expressing is wisdom. Sexual dysfunctions, sexual desire discrepancy, feeling obligated sexually, feeling sexual shame, feeling low desire or too much desire, feeling fear around sexuality, and facing issues of sexual abuse from your past are areas where I can help support your growth. Unfortunately most people have not grown up robust learning around relationships, sexuality, and how the two work together. I’m here to answer questions, to help you discern the right moves for you to make, and for you to live into who you most want to be.