You may be here in the midst of undergoing grief and loss, battling anger, anxiety, stress or burnout, feeling lost or stuck, battered by intergenerational burdens, struggling with illness or suicidality. I’m here to help you navigate the rapids, row, swim, float, or find rest on the riverbank. (As one of you folks said, “Sometimes we just got to sit by a river.”)

And we can sit there together. Hello there. I’m Gillian Parrish, fellow traveler. I grew up moving and pulled between cultures, living a bit outside and in between. I grew up reading, and so have a long habit of empathetic imagination. I spent some years working in nonprofits and universities, where I helped people cultivate their creativity, clarity, and careers.

As a Focusing practitioner of near 25 years and a meditator for longer, I love helping people tap into their wisdom as a Focusing-Oriented psychotherapist and coach. (Find out more on the Ways page.) Along the way, I’ve taught these mindfulness skills in business, healthcare, social work, and education colleges at various universities, and I weave those skills into our work here.

Somatic partswork (IFS) undergirds my way of working, which flows seamlessly from Focusing. And I offer too somatic EMDR and dreamwork, which works/plays in the same deep imaginal waters. I also have trained in ACT, which provides a framework for shifting habits and taking action. (I share more about these modalities on the Ways page.)

People often tell me our work kindles/rekindles their creativity, and helps them unblock creative processes. This fits years of teaching creative writing to adults and designing genre-blurring courses on psychosocial topics, ranging from the reflective lenses of spiritual memoir and monster fiction to the hard truths of docupoetics and fairytales. Course books tended to be conscious of our collective shadow—ecocrisis, fascism, incarceration, intergenerational trauma, racism, violence, war—balanced by personal warmth that infuses learning communities with love and humor—which fits our work here too.

I offer that to say that I see us as people in process and in context, often struggling against oppressive forces, large ones that shape our life paths, and small ones like shoulds that misshape us. I share it too in part because of a Jungian tendency to see our lives as adventures, with all kinds of witches and monsters, fools and magicians along the way, of course often played by parts of ourselves.

I love crafting practices that help people shift out of their habitual perceptions into new ways of seeing/being. Clients and fellow therapists often have remarked that how I work feels “magical” and “psychedelic,” opening up surprising pathways where the road/river seems to end.

Along with this expansion of possibilities, the way I work is grounded and grounding, rooted in a coaching approach that takes insight into action, making lasting changes through enjoyable practices that replenish and enliven daily living. Part of what happens as we work together is connecting/reconnecting with rest and wonder and learning and play.

I have an MA in Clinical Mental Health Counseling and love the continuous learning in this field. For fun, I read, meditate, chat with friends and family, and enjoy scifi shows, rockhounding, treewatching, and cooking new soups. A body thinks well in motion, and I love woods walks and long-haul flights and drives. A mind dives deep in stillness, and I love learning from dreams in their various forms—fiction, poem, photo film, dreams of the night, the day, and in between.  

For the learning nerds/teaching geeks out there, here’s something I wrote a while back about cultivating new habits of perception: https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-and-learning/jedi-training-developing-habits-perception-disciplines/)

Some other words on ways I work: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists/gillian-parrish-saint-louis-mo/1336503