Individual Counseling for Your Concerns in Portland, OR

I am Bart Walsh and I direct Affinity Counseling and Hypnosis. My orientation to counseling, psychotherapy and hypnotherapy is essentially a strengths perspective with a solution focus. The strengths perspective acknowledges all the strengths, resources and instinctual imperatives within an individual that have helped the individual get to the present moment. Each individual is unique, has a unique history and carries a unique set of experience, learning and resources. Each human being, from intrauterine development on, accumulates experience which contributes to a personal foundation of reality. This reality encompasses identity (self-perception), relationship (other-perception), expected response to the course of the environment, belief about the future and personal role in the future.

Address Distressing Problems

Distressing or problematic experience can disrupt a healthy flow of resources and distort perceptions. Quite often distressing symptoms indirectly reflect the particular resources needed to resolve the problem, positioning the solution in the problem. Almost always the strengths and resources necessary to enact favorable change are present in the troubled person.

Many strengths and mind-body resources are not even at a conscious level of awareness.Modern science has revealed much about resources and mind-body communication taking place out of conscious awareness. We now have evidence of regular, ongoing communication between the central nervous system, the immune system, the endocrine system and the emotional system. Just as what is happening in the body affects our thoughts and emotions, so too our thoughts and emotions can affect what is happening in the body. Hypnosis and other approaches can tap into mind-body communication and access many resources normally not available at a conscious level of awareness.

Automatic Mechanisms

Trauma studies have identified automatic adaptive and protective mechanisms operating outside of conscious control. The "fight or flight" response, for example, is activated at times of real or perceived threat. Problematic panic and anxiety reflect a fully functional, important instinctual mechanism (a strength) just needing a "pause button" installed for calmer functioning.

The strengths perspective helps me to scan for the resources needed in you to resolve your concern.

The influences that guide my work and contribute to the strengths perspective have been derived from studies, experience or training in: systems theory, Jungian therapy, cognitive therapy, object relations theory, Ericksonian hypnotherapy, hypnosis, breath work, narrative therapy, ego-state therapy, solution focused therapy, music therapy, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing and more.
Woman curling up — counseling in Portland, OR
Trauma studies have identified automatic adaptive and protective mechanisms operating outside of conscious control. The "fight or flight" response, for example, is activated at times of real or perceived threat. Problematic panic and anxiety reflect a fully functional, important instinctual mechanism (a strength) just needing a "pause button" installed for calmer functioning.

The strengths perspective helps me to scan for the resources needed in you to resolve your concern.

The influences that guide my work and contribute to the strengths perspective have been derived from studies, experience or training in: systems theory, Jungian therapy, cognitive therapy, object relations theory, Ericksonian hypnotherapy, hypnosis, breath work, narrative therapy, ego-state therapy, solution focused therapy, music therapy, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing and more.
Woman curling up — counseling in Portland, OR

Contact Me to Schedule An Appointment

Based upon the concerns you present, the psychobiological resources you reflect and the information you provide, a particular approach to treatment will be selected for your counseling or hypnosis experience. The treatment approach will be discussed and mutually agreed upon. Your feedback in session will allow you to regulate the pace of treatment. The frequency of visits is negotiable.