Dr. Karina
McGovern Chace
Jungian Psychologist, LPC
Loudoun Psychotherapy, Inc.
Serving children, adolescents & adults.
Introducing The Sacred Rebellion™
An 8-week live psychoeducational group for women reclaiming themselves after narcissistic abuse & coercive control.
Services:
Individual
Therapy
Services include:
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Individual Counseling
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Adolescent & Women's Issues
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Issues specific to Military Families
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Jungian Depth Psychotherapy
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Sandtray Therapy Sessions (available upon request)
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Specialties: Life Transitions; Transformation; Anxiety/Depression; Bereavement/Grief, Trauma, Loss; Fertility/IVF; Relationship Counseling from a Jungian Perspective
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Long-Distance Sessions by phone are available
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Face-to-face support groups, as well as online support groups
Treatment for:
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anxiety, fears, child and adolescent development, depression, relationship issues, life coaching, loss & grief, trauma and PTSD, dream work, life questions, spirituality, fertility & IVF support, and other issues.
Appointments are generally weekly and last for 50-60 minutes. 90-minute sessions are also available. Payment is required at the time of session; 24-hour cancellation is required.
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Treatment Orientation: Psychodynamic, Jungian, Cognitive Therapy, Play & Sandtray Therapy
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Modalities: Individual Counseling, Sandtray Therapy, Narrative Therapy, Dream Work
Fees:
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50-60 minute sessions: $150
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1/2 sessions available for $75
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Please note I do not work directly with insurance companies; however, I provide a statement that allows most (if not all) of my clients to get reimbursed by their insurance companies.
You may visit my Psychology Today page for further information:
Sandtray Therapy
Sandplay is an expressive therapy used with children, adolescents, adults, families, couples and groups. Miniature images, sand, and water are used in a tray of sand to create patterns and worlds. The sandplay process promotes self-expression and can be used for transformation and healing. Karina offers individual sandtray sessions, and facilitates sandtray therapy groups.
When talking doesn’t help …
The classic image that comes to mind when you think of counseling is a psychiatrist sitting in a comfortable chair, notebook and pen in hand, and the patient lying on a sofa, talking non-stop about their early childhood experiences. This is because it has long been thought that the best way to deal with a problem, or even know the problem, is to talk about it. That’s the common narrative, and it’s true to a great extent. But sometimes, a person can’t talk about it. Can’t open up. Can’t deal with the pain in any way but to hide it away or keep it locked. That’s when the experts know words are useless. What this person needs is, to express herself some other way.
The father-daughter relationship has a remarkable history, illustrated in literature, art, and rituals of both ancient and modern society. Yet, contrasted with other parent-child relationships, the father-daughter dyad has attracted limited attention.
This dissertation explores the phenomenological experience of witnessing six women express their life stories through sandplay. The sand worlds reveal the daughter’s archetypal reflections of her father, including the early death of father, a loss that occurred when the woman was a young adult. This study investigates whether common images arise in sandplay with adult women whose fathers died prematurely, and whether there are commonalities in how these women perceive intimate relationships.
Sandplay involves primal affects, and connects human beings with their childlike processes, opening the psyche to a realm that may not be available through other, verbal means. Jung calls this “the childhood aspect of the collective psyche,” but it is not confined to childhood, rather it exists at all stages of life (Stewart, 1995, p. 376). In the context of this research, sandplay opens up a dialogue between woman and researcher that is fertile with imagination and metaphor.
The witness provides the woman a shelter in which to create her sand world, and in this creation, the essence of a woman’s story emerges like tactile chapters from her personal chronicle. This leads to an organic dialogue that flows without the need for applied pressure from the researcher. As the witness sits beside the woman, acknowledging and valuing the world that has materialized, a participation mystique is formed.
The unconscious, a storehouse of primitive fantasies and memories, can be “a terrifying place in the mind until there is the therapeutic witness who values its discovery” (Goodman & Meyers, 2012, p. 15). Contained by this uncommon mode of togetherness, one may feel protected and supported. This dissertation concludes that sandplay in the presence of a compassionate witness may serve as a powerful ritual in healing and transformation.
Keywords: Archetype, Daughter, Emergence, Father, Images, Sandplay, Transformation, Witness
Doctoral Dissertation/
Research
See you soon!