Rae Littlewood, PhD, LLC

Have a look at my CV if you're curious about my education and training. What I really want you to know about working with me is that I show up for you wherever you are with ideas and energy to fuel your growth and transformation. I've worked for over a decade in private practice. In that time, training, consultation, and experience has shaped my perspective and my approach. Psychological flexibility (a concept named in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy), self-regulation (which encompasses emotions, behavior, and context), and attachment are essential to accurate self-knowledge and growth. I believe that "feeling better" is a transitory by-product of knowing better and doing better. To make forward progress in life, it is more important that we can tolerate difficult feelings and hardship while doing what needs to get done to have a healthy body, meaningful connections, valued work, and a safe place to sleep. There are a couple of areas in which I have developed some expertise over the years: *Assessments for organ donors, egg donors, and surrogates *Emotion-focused couples therapy *Pregnancy, pregnancy loss, infertility, postpartum, and parenthood *Parenting *Recovery from toxic relationships And, there are a few people and places that continue to influence my work: *Tara Brach, specifically Radical Acceptance and RAIN, who taught me how to recover from my own attachment wounds *Stan Tatkin, author of Wired for Love & We Do, where I learned that codependency is human nature and not a defect of character *Sue Johnson, founder of Emotion-Focused couples therapy (and trainers Nancy & Paul Aikin who first introduced me to the pursuer/withdrawer and the negative cycle) *Rick & Forrest Hansen's podcast "Being Well", always a thoughtful and thoroughly researched conversation *Dialectic Behavior Therapy, where I learned that having intense emotions in relationships is not pathological and how to find stability in the middle of an emotional storm Check out my blog if you would like to know what has inspired me recently... www.raelittlewoodphd.com