What I Do - Paul Ruffer

What I Do

What drives my clinical work, whether with individuals or couples, is a belief in my clients and their ability to grow from their struggles. I encourage clients to embrace their feelings of brokenness and inadequacy. Together we work to understand how these emotions compromise their functioning and fuel negative self-talk and perceptions. Our goal is to get comfortable being uncomfortable being vulnerable, and uncover what lies beneath vulnerability: life lessons, self-knowledge and wisdom.

My goal is to work myself out of a job, by empowering my clients to build therapeutic partnerships with their loved ones and to discover that they can do in their living rooms what we do in our clinical space. I help them believe that they have all they need, within and around them, to become the people, partners, and couples they wish to be.

Whether offering individual
or couples counseling:

  • I listen to, hear and witness your thoughts and feelings, so you’ll do the same.
  • I create a safe space where you feel heard, validated, and understood.
  • I encourage you to reflect non-judgmentally and compassionately upon your life, thoughts, and feelings.
  • I help you learn that problems are gifts, alerting you to disturbances in your life that are keeping you from knowing yourself and thriving.
  • I teach you that everything you yearn to know is inside you, and will, with patience, perseverance and compassionate inquiry, become known.
  • I believe in you and your ability to learn, grow, and change.
  • I remind you that you matter, and are worth all the energy, resources, and struggle this hard work entails, and that you can unlearn old patterns and behaviors in order to learn new ones.
  • And finally, I teach you that counseling or therapy is life-long learning that requires you to use daily the insights and skills you will learn in our work together.