“You are the universe expressing itself as a human for a little while.”
-Elkhart Tolle
Ash Anthony LMFT
Washington State Lic#: LF61245016
Hello there, my name is Ash (she/her). I believe that everyone has the capacity to access experiences of inner peace, deep knowing and genuine self love connecting us all to the larger systems that surrounds us in the universe. Often times there is so much in the way that we can’t find this place of home within ourselves, and that’s where therapy can help.
I am currently licensed as a professional LMFT in Washington State, and I hold a MA in Couples and Family Therapy from Antioch University Seattle with an emphasis on family systems therapy, sexuality, internalized oppression and intergenerational trauma. For years, I’ve worked with individual adults and relationships navigating family dynamics and ancestor work, life transitions, creative blocks, psychedelic support, burnout and perfectionism, addiction, sexuality, trauma processing, gender expression, spirituality and self discovery.
With a combined 10 years of experience in mindfulness, Jungian Psychology, Transpersonal Psychology, Buddhist meditation practices, yoga and the arts, I will lean into my body of knowledge with empirically researched modalities to best support you.
To keep my practice ethical, I attend monthly supervision in contemplative psychotherapy with Naropa University’s Contemplative Psychotherapy & Buddhist Psychology professor and chair Uğur Kocataşkın, PhDc. Additionally, I attend a peer consult group that investigates the role and impact of internalized oppression in the therapist-client relationship in order to contradict a client’s experience of oppression, and co-create conditions for collective liberation.
My ancestral heritage is Eastern and Central European, Irish, Sephardic and Nanesemond. I honor my ancestors through ritual, art, dance, music and food. I love creating spaces, painting, making short films with friends, playing and recording music, listening to the birds sing in the morning while I sip coffee, writing poetry and making delicious home cooked meals. I am a member of the LGBTQIA+ community, and tend to work well with a broad spectrum of human gender expression, sexual identities and relational systems.
Trainings, Education and Memberships:
EMDR level 1 and 2
Hakomi Somatic Therapy level 1 (completed) and level 2 (in progress)
Reiki Level 1
C.G. Jung Society Member
AAMFT American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy
WAMFT Washington Association of Marriage and Family Therapy
WHY THERAPY?
Are you trying hard to relax, but can’t unwind? Is it a challenge for you to create meaningful connections with others or find a partner(s) that aligns with your values and dreams? Is it difficult for you to speak your truth and manifest what you really want in this life? Are you having difficulty navigating a significant life transition? Do you question the meaning of your existence? Is there something in the way of you trusting yourself, keeping you from your joy and interrupting your innate creative flow?
Maybe you’ve even tried to solve the issue already by signing up for an online course to improve your circumstances, you’ve read ALL the books, or you’ve consumed every podcast or tik-tok that you can hoping something speaks to what you are experiencing, but you still feel stuck…
Therapy can help move you through these stuck feelings and back into flow and alignment with yourself and what you value.
Therapy offerings:
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Family Systems Therapy
The family system we are born into and our ancestral lineage impacts how we understand ourselves and navigate the world. Family Systems Therapy can help you make peace with the ways you may carry hidden legacies from your family past and present.
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Psychedelic Support
Harm-reduction, preparation and integration support in a safe, confidential space to support you on your psychedelic journey.
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Somatic Psychotherapy
In order to gain access to our unconscious material, we must first have permission from the body. Somatic psychotherapy involves aspects of mindfulness, nervous system regulation skills, trance states and visualization.
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Transpersonal Psychotherapy
Transpersonal psychotherapy applies a psychological understanding to experiences that go beyond the sense of egoic identity and expand into other realms of consciousness.
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Shadow Work
Contacting the shadow is possible through the contemplative practices, psychedelics, dream work, IFS, Gestalt therapy, somatic modalities trance states, guided meditation and EMDR.
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EMDR
EMDR is an efficient and unique therapy for a number of issues including but not limited to reoccurring anxiety patterns, PTSD, acute trauma, panic disorder, phobias and social anxiety.
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Trauma Recovery
The process of healing your past can begin a new relationship with yourself based on authentic self love and compassion. This practice offers support to anyone who is experiencing symptoms of PTSD, C-PTSD and acute trauma.
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Relational Therapy
Relational therapy can help you better understand your attachment style, and explore your unique intimacy template so you can find more security in relationship to yourself and your loved ones.
“Cure yourself with the light of the sun and the rays of the moon. With the sound of the river and the waterfall. With the swaying of the sea and the fluttering of birds. Heal yourself with mint, with neem and eucalyptus. Sweeten yourself with lavender, rosemary, and chamomile. Hug yourself with the cocoa bean and a touch of cinnamon. Put love in tea instead of sugar, and take it looking at the stars. Heal yourself with the kisses that the wind gives you and the hugs of the rain. Get strong with bare feet on the ground and with everything that is born from it. Get smarter every day by listening to your intuition, looking at the world with the eye of your forehead. Jump, dance, sing, so that you live happier. Heal yourself, with beautiful love, and always remember: you are the medicine.”
-María Sabina
I deeply believe that you already have the knowledge, wisdom, ability, and capacity present within yourself to venture into your healing journey.
I believe that the concept of fully being healed doesn’t actually exists. Healing is a journey, not a destination. Therapy can help you tap into your innate capacity to hold the complexity of your lived experiences with more compassion and responsiveness, while being less reactive.
I believe the mind and body are one organism. If you went to the doctor with a laceration to your body, the doctor would remove physical obstacles in the way of your wound and help create favorable conditions for healing, but the doctor does not direct or cause the healing that ensues. The body can initiate a remarkably complex and sophisticated healing process and always spontaneously attempts to move toward healing when we are injured. The psyche too exhibits an innate healing intelligence and capacity.
I see therapy from a relational, transpersonal, creative and somatic lens.
My approach is holistic, taking in the whole of a person’s experiences by acknowledging the importance of our relationships, family and culture and their impact on our psyche, the body’s wisdom, the expression of creativity as a healing agent and the aspects of being human that extend beyond the ego and roles we play. In essence, I believe integrating and exploring our human experiences not only through the mind, but also our physical body, social systems, emotional depths, creative pursuits, and intellectual understanding is essential if we want to deeply know our capacity to evolve and connect with our life force.
Together in our co-created therapy space, I will compassionately witness the reconnection to your truth. I may offer tools to assist you in this process, but will never tell you how to heal. In my role as a therapist, I prefer to keep a beginner’s mind and a client centered approach.
I understand that successful therapy outcomes are informed by a trusting therapeutic relationship and creating a secure attachment to yourself. Our work together will be informed by utilizing a balance of holistic practices and modern empirical counseling modalities.
“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few. ”
“Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.”
— Carl Jung
Shadow Work
When we are born our psyche is like a clean canvas ready to be painted on. We have an innate capacity to survive due to our nervous system which continues to develop after birth to keep us alive and safe. We have likely inherited traits from our parents through DNA, and nervous system regulation capacities from our birth parent. Essentially we come into this world shining, receptive and eager to live.
As we develop a sense of self, belonging in our family and communities, as well as identities and roles given to us by society, we soon develop an ego to defend our innocent beginnings. We begin to push away parts of ourselves to belong and feel safe. The ways each one of us represses parts of ourselves is the shadow of our persona.
Very early in life many of us are asked to betray our truth, our bodies, and our autonomy. A child’s wisdom is often dismissed as childish, so the child then pretends to be like the adults around them in order to be accepted and belong. People pleasing, emotional repression, rebellion, dissociation, power games, emotional reactivity and other responses to toxic environments emerge in a person, causing a particular flavor of neurosis we have aptly called the personality.
Integration of our shadow side can contribute to someone becoming less reactive to their internal experiences, and begin seeing themselves and the people in their lives with more clarity, compassion and less judgment. Often when judgmental parts of ourselves become better understood, grieved and felt we will soften our judgments of the world and our loved ones. From this vantage point we may see more possibilities for our future, feel an increased connection to our hearts, a sense of gratitude for all of the ways we coped to survive and less attachment to human suffering and inherited trauma.
Contacting the shadow is possible through contemplative practices, psychedelics, dream work, IFS, Gestalt therapy, somatic modalities, guided meditation and EMDR.
“What we call the personality is often a jumble of genuine traits and adopted coping styles that do not reflect our true self at all but the loss of it.” - Dr. Gabor Maté
Somatic Psychotherapy
One of the biggest challenges we may face in contacting our shadow parts is the way the nervous system has organized around these parts to regulate and keep ourselves safe. It makes sense that in order to gain access to our shadow, we must first have permission from the body.
I am trained in the Hakomi method, a body-centered psychotherapy. Hakomi creates an entrance to the shadow elements of ourselves through the body instead of the intellect. The Hakomi Method is grounded in five principles: mindfulness, organicity, nonviolence, mind-body integration, and unity. Unlike other types of therapy that utilize mindfulness as part of the process, Hakomi differs from other types of therapy taking a mindfulness-based approach: In Hakomi, nearly the entire therapy process is conducted in mindfulness.
Hakomi is similar to IFS. In fact, the founders of both IFS and Hakomi were dear friends and colleagues who consulted each other as they formed these two similar modalities. Both Hakomi and IFS create a container to contact parts of the psyche with curiosity and the support of a trained therapist. The main difference between IFS and Hakomi is the way we enter into relationship with our shadow parts, IFS is through the intellect first and Hakomi is through the body first.
By getting the body’s permission first, we are respecting the ways we have defended our innocent nature by not creating another betrayal. Hakomi is a consent based body-centered psychotherapy, meaning contact with these parts is always optional, and respecting the body’s pace can be just as healing as the shadow work itself.
“There is deep wisdom within our very flesh, if we can only come to our senses and feel it.”
EMDR
EMDR is a unique modality that combines of somatic therapy, exposure therapy, narrative therapy, hypnosis, visualizations, nervous system regulation tools and bilateral stimulation to ease anxiety and triggers in the nervous system. EMDR creates a calming trance state where traumatic events can be processed without overwhelming our systems. EMDR is helpful for a number of issues including but not limited to reoccurring anxiety patterns, PTSD, acute trauma, panic disorder, phobias, social anxiety and phobias. EMDR can be faster and more efficiently than talk therapy alone.
The acronym EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy. This means that we will utilize bilateral stimulation of the eyes by bring in a light bar to follow while processing any material that needs integration. Research shows that the bilateral stimulation in EMDR calms the amygdala (often referred to as our fear center) in the brain. It can simulate a similar feeling experienced when we go for a walk to clear our heads, often giving way to more openness and new perspectives about what is troubling us.
I have completed training level 1 and 2 through the EMDR institute and continue to seek consultation through supervisors who train other clinicians through the EMDR Institute.
Psychedelic Assisted Therapy
Psychedelics have the ability to assist us in accessing the unconscious in an expansive and profound way. Recent research and clinical trials have shown promising results for diagnosis like existential distress in palliative and cancer care, PTSD and treatment resistant depression and those diagnosed with autism.
Integration of psychedelic experiences is essential if we desire lasting change. When integration is absent, the procured knowledge from these experiences is easily lost and will often fade. Integration allows you to make the most of your journey before the curtain closes and your mind returns to its usual state. Often when psychedelic experiences aren’t integrated properly people think they need another psychedelic experience to get the same information, when integration of the original experience would have been more effective.
I have completed training with MAPS in MDMA assisted therapy, and received training in Ketamine assisted therapy from Telos in Mountlake Terrace where I offer Ketamine support to anyone who would like to explore this compound to support their mental well being. I currently offer psychedelic support to those who are choosing to utilize these compounds for their own personal growth, exploration of their minds, mental health related diagnosis or spirituality. I believe harm reduction, psychological support and taking a pause to integrate the experience can make psychedelics a powerful tool for transformation. Find out more about psychedelic support here.
*Ash Anthony LMFT is a supporter of the North Star Ethics Pledge for psychedelic practices. The pledge is a commitment to put ethics at the heart of psychedelic support.
Transpersonal Therapy
The meaning of the prefix trans in Latin is to go beyond so as to change. The prefix persona in Latin means mask. If we combine trans and persona we can determine that Transpersonal Psychotherapy could be defined as as a psychological understanding of experiences that go beyond the sense of egoic identity and expand into other realms of consciousness. In short, Transpersonal Psychotherapy acknowledges the wider aspects of humanity, life, the psyche and the cosmos.
Issues involving non-ordinary states of consciousness, dreams, peak experiences, mystical experiences, trance states, spiritual crisis, spiritual evolution, breathwork, religious conversion, mediation, spiritual practices, past life regression, near death experiences or other ineffable experiences may be explored through the lens of Transpersonal Psychotherapy.
Transpersonal Psychotherapy acknowledges that there is more to explore beyond our personal identity structures, experiences of the past and thoughts of the future. Transpersonal Psychotherapy acknowledges that there is much to explore in the unknown realms of human consciousness, and that any experience is to be believed and appreciated as a gift to curiously unravel.
I currently offer Hakomi and Psychedelic Assisted Therapy as transpersonal oriented modalities.
“The field of boundless emptiness is what exists from the very beginning. You must purify, cure, grind down, or brush away all the tendencies you have fabricated into apparent habits. Then you can reside in the clear circle of brightness.”
Trauma Recovery
Often after a trauma happens you may experience overwhelming feelings of grief and disconnection from your life. Sometimes the feelings are so much that it can be difficult to construct meaning from the experience and understand how to process the emotional impact. You may feel that you may never be lovable, capable, or able to trust others or your own thinking again. This can lead to beliefs that you are intrinsically flawed or less than, and you may begin playing small.
In treating trauma related issues, C-PTSD and PTSD, I utilize an attuned, attachment-based approach, and empirically researched modalities such as:
The process of healing your past can begin a new relationship with yourself based on authentic self love and compassion. Healing trauma can add nuance to your story, soften triggers, and help you discern where to take responsibility for your actions and reactions, and when that responsibility is on others. After therapy, you may even feel empowered to tell your story when it feels right. By processing the traumatic experience and putting the pieces in place, you may begin to restore a lost connection to your passions and find more resolution with what happened.
“Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathic witness.”
Family Systems Therapy
To know more about why we struggle and thrive, we need look no further than our family of origin for answers. As young children we begin to understand that belonging in our family system is the only way we can survive.
Some of us are born into families that are supportive and meet our needs, which often leads to a more secure attachment style. Some of us are born into families that don’t create a feeling of belonging, safety, care, acceptance or love. We may have experienced abuse mentally, spiritually, physically or sexually, witnessed violence, had a parent(s) that were codependent with us, were forced into the role of parenting our siblings or our parent(s), or may have repeatedly had our emotions and expression dismissed or refuted in favor of our parent(s) comfort or reputation.
By looking at the larger systems that we have originated from, we may see unconscious patterns, attachment styles, trauma reactions, or behaviors similar to our families that we may try to repress. We may be carrying family legacies that we are unaware of, or cultural messaging passed through our ancestral line that doesn’t make sense in our lives today. Brining these legacies into our awareness can help you make new choices that impact your personal life and relationships.
Family systems therapy is a form of psychotherapy that helps individuals find resolution with issues they continue to harbor from their family system. We will look at patterns in our ancestral line, cultural impacts of oppression (ie. sexism, racism, transphobia, homophobia, ageism, classism, bodyism and acculturation), addiction, abuse, impacts of trauma and war and roles in the family system that we had to fill to maintain homeostasis.
I am a licensed couples and family counselor, and the core of my education at Antioch University in Seattle is in family systems theory. Using this framework is depathologizing, and recognizes the essential truth that we exist in relationship to one another. One human’s struggle isn’t a fault in the individual, but rather a product of systemic influence as well as a lack of awareness of these influences. Through compassion and awareness the legacy parts that you carry from your family of origin can be integrated better into your psyche, contributing to less suffering and more peace.
“When we heal ourselves, we heal our ancestors from wounds that run deep in our family. When we heal our ancestors, we heal the world from wounds that run deep in humanity.”
Relational Therapy
We can learn a lot in relationships with other people, but often our vulnerabilities can be heightened and we can be at a loss on how to communicate with one another about it.
In relational therapy I use a combination of PACT couple’s therapy techniques, nervous system regulation strategies, attachment based therapy, non-violent communication, somatic therapy and family systems therapy.
My intention in relational therapy is to center the relationship as my focus, without being biased or siding with one party over another. In relational therapy, we will collaborate and hone the necessary skills to listen to our loved ones with softness and clear attunment, communicate more effectively about our needs and desires, ground our nervous systems with co-regulation techniques before entering into complex conversations and discover more about how to love each other in ways that deescalate conflict and increase secure attachment.
As a seasoned licensed Couples and Family Therapist, with years of experience intentionally holding a brave space for relationships, my practice emphasizes empirically tested couples therapy techniques in conjunction with creative and satisfying interventions.
“A lover asked his beloved,
Do you love yourself more than you love me?
Beloved replied, I have died to myself and I live for you.
I’ve disappeared from myself and my attributes,
I am present only for you.
I’ve forgotten all my learnings,
but from knowing you I’ve become a scholar.
I’ve lost all my strength, but from your power I am able.
If I love myself...I love you.
If I love you...I love myself.”
“Neuroscience research shows that the only way we can change the way we feel is by becoming aware of our inner experience and learning to befriend what is going inside ourselves.”
― Bessel A. van der Kolk
My intention is to be a space of belonging for all people from any religious background or belief system, gender expression, sexual expression, class background, physical and intellectual ability, ethnicity, race, indigenous identity, birth era and age, country of origin or immigration status.
Sweet Darkness
When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.
When your vision has gone,
no part of the world can find you.
Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.
There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.
The dark will be your home
tonight.
The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.
You must learn one thing.
The world was made to be free in.
Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.
Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn
anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.
-David Whyte