• What are you getting yourself into here?!
  

This will hopefully give you a sense of how I do this job called therapist. 

The central dilemma of almost everyone I work with seems to boil down to: how do I thrive and belong, how do I love and be loved, in the mind and body that I have, as exactly who I am? When we turn towards that question, what we find in answer are the relational, cultural and ancestral barriers to feeling safe and connected just as we are.  I almost always see the psychological "problems" that clients bring as an invitation to make sense of and transform the internalized structures of family, society, and epigenetics that don't, and probably have never, fit them, and then to restructure what they can in their external lives so their soul can find seat and live the life they came here to live. 

I work best with people who are eager to explore their inner psychology and who already have some experience with spiritual or meditative practice and a sense of the possibilities outside the scope of their thinking mind. If you have no experience with any of these things but you feel called to explore in this direction, I can help guide you in. If you are already a healer in some way and feel stuck, out of tune with your soul’s purpose, or just know there is more, I can help guide you deeper in. 

Although what I do is called "psychotherapy," the work that clients and I actually do together is more a kind of spiritual inquiry that holds awareness of both our individual consciousness and our experiences in body and life, and our place within the collective human-cultural-spiritual experience over time. To me, psychotherapy is inherently spiritual work because when we work with the individual, we are also always working in the non-personal collective of family, culture, ancestry, and soul lineage. This is the territory that we can explore together. 

Ellen Santaniello has a BA in pre-medical Biology from Brown University (1986) and a Master of Arts and CAGS in Holistic Counseling from Salve Regina University (2010). She is licensed and insured as a mental health counselor in the State of Rhode Island.