Taylor Simon

Who I am as a therapist

I believe that developing a safe, transparent therapeutic relationship is key to achieving the best outcomes. I’m going to be myself and will always hold space for you to do the same.

You won't get a blank slate, and you won't have to wonder what I hold behind a facade. As a relational therapist, you'll be able to feel my presence in the quality of our connection and my own authentic energy. Together, we’ll work toward reconnecting with the parts of you that feel most real, most alive, and most like you.

As a therapist trained in liberation psychology, I also hold awareness of the larger systems that shape our lives, social, cultural, political, and economic, and how they may have contributed to your experience.

It’s my belief that the well-being of any individual cannot be improved without addressing the impact of discrimination, inequality, and oppression where it exists.

Through part of our work together, we’ll address the impact of discrimination in your life, whether you are marginalized at a systemic level or even within your family structure

ALL of your lived experience will be taken into consideration as we work to liberate you from the constraints that trauma has placed on your life.

If you’ve experienced trauma, you’ve likely had to adapt in ways that helped you survive, even if they don’t feel like they fit anymore.

Perhaps you’ve become hyper-independent because you learned early on you couldn’t rely on other people to meet your needs. Maybe you self-medicate or seek ways to distract yourself from the pain of simply being you. Maybe you learned to rely only on yourself. Maybe you disconnect, push things down, or find ways to cope that get you through the day.

And maybe it works – at least, to a degree.

But you deserve more than a life lived in survival mode.

Healing from childhood trauma is very much available if you’re willing to work through the pain that keeps you stuck and start building a new relationship with your authentic self.

Together, we’ll explore the protective patterns shaping your experience and reconnect you with your inner authority, the part of you that knows what’s true. This work is collaborative, attuned to your lived experience, and incorporates all parts of you. Through therapy and, when appropriate, expanded-state work, we create space for insight, healing, and more

If something in you is stirring, a quiet pull toward something more honest, more whole, this may be your invitation. Beneath the patterns, your true self is there. You don’t need to have it all figured out before you reach out, all you need is the sense that something isn’t quite right. Reach out when you’re ready, and we’ll take the next step together.

Informed by Internal Family Systems, Parts Work is a therapeutic modality that works with the multi-faceted dynamics of being human. It allows us to look at the many different parts of who you are and identify which parts have been disconnected. There may be parts that actually feel at odds with eachother, creating a disjointed experience of life. Over time we’ll give voice to each part, name their core desires, and gradually reintegrate them to create a greater sense of wholeness.

We have come to understand that the effects of trauma reside not only in the mind — but also in the body. Experiencing a traumatic event, or growing up in an emotionally unhealthy environment, can cause dysregulation in your nervous system, leaving you in a perpetual state of survival. Rewiring the fight or flight patterns you’ve been living in helps to connect your mind and body and create a new loop where your thoughts can signal your body that it’s safe to relax.

Healing attachment and relational trauma from childhood is a process. A critical part of that process is grieving the fact that you didn’t have a parent who was able to meet your needs in the healthy way you deserved. While this can be painful to acknowledge, it’s also empowering to realize that you are now the best person to reparent yourself.