Typical Clients

The World's Most Important Job  

I work with a lot of parents.  I see you.  I get it.  I'm a parent too.  I'm here to help you with the ongoing challenges of parenting.  

Parenting is the most difficult, dynamic, and critically important job that we will ever have as humans.  Despite our best intentions, we often find ourselves ill prepared due to too few positive role models and little if any intentional instruction in the skills that would lead to establishing and maintaining a high functioning family system.  We're not born with these skills, and they certainly don't magically manifest at the birth of a child.  This lack of preparation has long term health implications for everyone involved, especially for our children, who are particularly vulnerable, bearing the brunt of our inevitable deficiencies and shortcomings.  

In addition to trying to do the impossible for our kids, we're faced with the task of somehow dealing with our own life transitions and challenges, which can be incredibly significant, all while attempting to manage each day as best we can.  It's a daunting task, and we parents need all the help we can get. 

The World's Most Difficult Job

I work with a lot of parents who are also co-parents--divorced or separated parents who are tasked with sharing the raising of their minor children between their two households.  Every co-parenting dynamic is different.  Services for co-parents can be tailored to account for each parent's level of functioning, safety considerations, and the unique needs of their child/ren.

Some of the most common Co-Parenting challenges include:  

• establishing a sense of safety, security, and stability for everyone in the co-parenting system

• focusing on parenting and meeting the child's needs throughout the process of separation / divorce

• shielding the children from parental conflict before, during, and after separation / divorce

• establishing or increasing contact with a child following separation / divorce

• setting up, carrying out or modifying a parenting plan (the formalized co-parenting arrangement) following separation / divorce

• addressing and neutralizing all types of abusive behaviors and safety issues that negatively impact the entire family system

• enhancing relationship within the family system (parent to child, parent to parent, or co-parent to co-parent relationship dynamic)

I help co-parents address and neutralize safety issues while improving the level of functioning of each parent and the co-parenting system as a whole for the benefit of everyone involved, especially the children and the child's support system (their child care providers, extended family, friends, religious community, neighbors, teachers, coaches, health care providers, etc.).

The World's Most Honorable Job

A Protector is someone who protects others and things from harm, injury or damage.  A Protector's main responsibility is to protect themselves and others in the systems they live in from being abused in any way. 

I work with people who have come to recognize the negative impact abuse has played in their own lives and in their various interpersonal systems.  These clients realize there is repair work and healing that needs to occur.  They see the value of preventing future harm to themselves and others.  Rather than just promising things will be different and they will do better, they actually put in the effort to attend services that help them to build awareness and skills necessary to interrupt patterns of abusive behaviors at home, at work, and out in the community.   

The presence of abusive behaviors is the primary indicator of personal dysfunction which inevitably breaks down interpersonal systems creating further debilitation and dysfunction for everyone involved.  It's a cyclical process that needs intentional interruption through interventions designed to improve individual and systemic functioning.  

If we want to be a healthy presence in our families and the other interpersonal systems we are a part of, we must embark on the difficult task of identifying all use of abusive behaviors and working to eliminate abuse in the interpersonal systems in which we live and work.  We can find healthier ways of getting our needs met, by working with others instead of against them, as allies not adversaries.  We can create processes and arrangements that work for everyone involved.  And we must become Protectors.  This is where COEXISTUS comes in.  You're not alone, I'm here to help.  

The World's Most Overlooked Job

Have you ever had a "bad roommate"?  Most people have.  Some still are!

When people move in together, they think naively that everything will be great, nothing bad will happen, and if it does, everything will workout fine.  Too often though, it's a recipe for disaster due to everyone's different expectations, standards, and interpersonal skills among other things.  Often a living situation gets so bad that people avoid going there, or worse, the police are called due to a domestic disturbance.  Some people are actually so traumatized by their dysfunctional living situations that it can take awhile, if ever, to recover.  

When I say roommates, I'm talking about more than just people sharing a room, so housemates, flatmates, cohabitants, household members, unmarried partners... basically anyone who lives with anybody else!

Married couples and families as well are often extremely frustrated with how things are going at home.  

Common frustrations expressed by past clients include but are not limited to:

• Our house is a mess!  It's driving us all crazy.

• It's just assumed that I will do all the cooking and cleaning... this isn't right!

• Our son is just a lump... he spends all day gaming or on his phone, he leaves his dirty dishes and laundry all over the house, and then resents us for saying anything.  We've tried everything and nothing seems to help.

• My roommate is a horrible person to live with--she eats my food, won't pay his share of the bills, and I wind up doing all the cleaning.  

• It's fend for yourself at our house.  We eat whatever.  We go to bed whenever.  No one really cares.  It's just chaos.    

• We had a friend move in "temporarily" to help him out but now it seems like he'll never leave, and worse, he stays up way too late drinking and has his friends coming and going at all hours. 

I help people recognize unproductive and dysfunctional interpersonal patterns, how they contribute to them, how they can interrupt them, and how they can set up more productive and functional processes in their family or other interpersonal system so they can better meet the needs of everyone involved.