We are continuing to Grow and Offer More Ways to Explore, Heal, and Connect!

In 2020, Inner Life Adventures turns 10 years old!  The past 10 years of serving Northern Colorado – Fort Collins, Loveland, Greeley, Cheyenne, and Laramie has been an amazing experience.  Hearing so many stories of challenges and growth has shaped me tremendously. I want to thank you for your support in the last decade.

In the book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell suggests that reaching the 10,000-Hour Rule, which he considers the key to success in any field, is simply a matter of practicing a specific task that can be accomplished with 20 hours of work a week for 10 years.  I’d argue it also takes self reflection, improving the process, learning new ideas, and getting coaching or guidence.  Either way, I’ve learned so much from the experience of serving our community.  Knowledge combined with experience is really what creates mastery.

Never content to stay stagnant, in the last decade I’ve continued to train and learn the most cutting edge modalities, as well as some of the oldest and most ancient that modern day has forgotten.  In order to offer more non-traditional approaches, I have formed a separate company that offers nature based programs, including retreats, workshops, rites of passage, and connected coaching.  This new business is named “Reconnecting to Our Nature.”

Inner Life Adventures will continue as it has, offering mindfulness based somatic counseling psychotherapy.  In fact, Inner Life Adventures is growing in 2020 hiring clinicians in line with our mission and values.  We’ll be offering more couples and family sessions to help with your relationships and child behaviors.  We’ll also be increasing availability so you won’t have to wait weeks or months to get in.  I apologize to those who have wanted to get in that I have not had the time for.  Hopefully this change will make these services more available to you.

Reconnecting to Our Nature will be growing alongside Inner Life Adventures offering more coaching, retreat, and workshops to help you find your own path to growth and healing.  Reconnecting to Our Nature is informed by my training and experience with the nature connected work of School of Lost Borders, 8 Shields, Jungian Psychology, and the initiations, Rites of Passage (such as vision quest), Ritual, and council I’ve experienced through training and apprenticing with men’s organizations and various idiginous elders.  Guiding you to become the leader of your own life. 

What’s the difference between coaching, counseling, and psychotherapy?

The truth is, the lines are blurry.  There’s a lot of overlap with things that both good coaches and therapists do.  That’s why there are so many providers out there and a million different answers.  One of the biggest differences is the depth of background and experience.  Having a deep background and experience matters because that is the source of intuition and creativity for those situations that don’t fit the standard patterns, tools, or templates you can find online.  More specifically, here’s what we think and why we created a separate business for coaching and programs.

Counseling and psychotherapy is a regulated profession with specific laws about record keeping, relationship boundaries, scope of practice, confidentiality, etc.  Coaching is not regulated, though there are becoming more certifications and professional organizations seeking to standardize and create ethics to keep clients safer.  Those are guidelines and not laws.  There of course are pro’s and con’s to both approaches.  There are many amazing coaches out there, and also many that don’t have the experience or training to really be effective long term.  One of the benefits of counselors is you know they have standard training and are bound by the same laws and ethics to get and maintain a license.  

One of the drawbacks to a licensed counselor is the pressure from insurance companies and licensing boards on only using evidence based practices such as CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) or DBT (Dialectical Behavioral Therapy). This is especially true if you are utilizing managed care (insurance) who can dictate how many sessions, what diagnosis, and audit your records to ensure the therapist is adhering to their idea of what your care should look like. These approaches work for some people in some situations, but newer research shows the long term effect of CBT is not as strong.  It’s a great start, but we are more interested in going deeper to address the core patterns for lasting long term change, not just short term gains that are lost again.  

Further, when people try counseling and the first attempt doesn’t work, they blame the counselor or worse blame themselves for not being a good enough client, rather than expand the picture to see what is really happening and what else could be effective.  That is where your provider having a broader background and skill set can be more effective.  Some of the newer modalities or older nature based modalities don’t have the evidence base as the standard fare, but for the right client can be effective.  Our approach is finding the right path for you, not forcing you to the path that research showed worked for a lot of other people.  It may work for you, it may not.    Utilizing a coach with broad experience and a variety of skills and tools to use with you can help you find the right path for you quicker rather than forcing you into the traditional models.

That said, for some people the structure of predictable weekly hour long sessions, being able to pay less by using insurance, and staying grounded with tried and true practices that have lots of evidence base is exactly what is needed.  That is why we are continuing to offer therapy in a professional office setting by licensed professionals.  And for those that would rather explore in a more open way with an experienced guide, coaching and nature based work is an option as well.  In either approach, it is up to you to decide which path(s) you are wanting and willing to go down.  We have the skills and ability to guide you in many different directions.  We won’t force you into the direction traveled by most everyone else when something else is calling to you.  Together we’ll help you find your unique way, wherever that may lead.

In short, Inner Life Adventures counseling and psychotherapy when what you need is the safety, stability, and structure of professional counseling, in an office, in town.  Reconnecting to Our Nature nature based coaching when you are ready to venture off the well worn trails, with a trained and experienced guide, into the wilderness and to learn better how to guide your own life. You don’t know what you will get with any given coach or counselor, but hopefully this guide has given you a few things to think about in making your choice with us, or whatever provider you choose if we are not right for you.