About Therapy
Relationships have been hard.
Every time you start to get some forward momentum and feel like your life is on the right track, more bumps arise in your relationships.
You feel misunderstood or simply that you are not a priority to others.
There is a missing link. While you long for connection with others, you are curious about your connection to yourself.
You’re not sure how to move forward.
One thing is abundantly clear; things can’t continue like this.
But attempts at therapy in the past have all proven useless. Investing your limited time, money, and energy only to make no noticeable progress was frustrating and deflating.
You’re not sure why trying again now would provide different results. It’s starting to feel like nothing will ever work.
It is time to start focusing on what is possible.
There’s a tendency in life to over-emphasize our challenges and make them more significant than they need to be. People starting therapy frequently look for problems to discuss and, as a result, give more weight and attention to the bad rather than the good.
Yes, pain and suffering are inescapable parts of existence. However, if you’re at peace with yourself, you’ll find that you can still act with strength, integrity, and purpose, even in the face of the most difficult challenges.
Often there is far more joy in life than we allow ourselves to see, and little bits of pain get unjustifiably magnified. You deserve to amplify the positives in your life and let joy beget more joy.
How Therapy Can Support You
Therapy can become a process of searching for pain. Not here!
The last thing I want for anyone is to be thinking, “I have therapy today, let me think of what has gone wrong this week, so I have something to talk about.” Instead, we will find a balance between addressing the hard stuff and FEELING the ways the good stuff has started to come more and more into your life.
It also means, you will not need to be in therapy forever! This is a firm value of mine, so we will work together to find that sweet spot for when ending seems best for you.
Let your newfound passion for life be contagious.
I believe that as each of us grows, heals, and evolves, we can spread that hope and promise to others.
As we begin to treat ourselves with unshakable warmth, love, and compassion, these feelings extend to our neighbors, partners, friends, and families.
Our good vibes infect the next person, and they continue to spread until the entire community becomes healthier and more at peace as a result.
About Fanshen Thompson
Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW)
I was born and raised in a rural town in Northern California, where my parents went to settle on a hippy commune in the 1960s. Eventually, my family bought a small parcel of land and built the home I grew up in. It was here that I began to develop a sense that we are all interconnected: humans, animals, and the earth. This upbringing is the foundation from which all that I have done, and continue to do, arises.
My strong desire to build community, connection, and to support others led me to social work. I worked with teenagers and young adults in the foster care system for many years before moving on to outpatient work providing therapeutic support to our community and supervision for therapists. A defining feature that differentiates social work training from other types of therapy training is that we hold the dual focus on individual well-being in a social context and the well-being of society overall.
It was from this foundation of social work that I came to my therapy practice in 2021. While the clinical training I have experienced over the years has been beneficial to the work I do, my deepest learnings have come from sitting with all the people I have supported over my career thus far and from my personal healing work.
The clients I have helped to make meaning of their lives; the therapists I have supported to become the best possible therapists; as well as my partner and children who have challenged me to step up and be the best possible person I can be. To listen and to love deeper than I could imagine. So this is what I do in my work. I listen and I love. Together, with the wisdom and skill that I bring, and your own wisdom and bravery to step into unknown places, you shift, you change, you grow into the best of who you are.
I’d love to step into this journey with you. Reach out today.
“Fanshen’s approach is warm, individualized, efficient and effective. She is able to listen critically and respond with actionable, but manageable steps that make you feel empowered and not overwhelmed. She also is excellent at observing non-verbal communications, which may be particularly difficult for others in remote sessions. Each of those skills allow her to expertly adjust her suggestions to address my individual needs at that time, but that work towards my overall goals.”
— Previous client