Who Am I
My Practice
I'm a Licensed Psychologist in the Denver metro area and a graduate of the University of Denver, Graduate School of Professional Psychology.
I provide therapy to people of all ages. I have 20 years experience helping children, teens, adults, and couples. I have a special interest in working with adults on issues related to quality of life, relationships, parenting, and stage of life transitions.
Every life contains difficulties for which we are not prepared. Life does feel overwhelming sometimes and the solutions hard to find. The work I do is designed to support and guide you to find practical solutions and renewed purpose in your life and your relationships.
If I had to distill down the essence of how I practice, I would say this: I think of therapy as two or more people, mutually respectful, leaning in, listening, and speaking to that which is most vital and alive.
Feel free to contact me for a professional phone consultation at no charge.
My Approach
Initially, my role is to create a warm, non-judgmental environment where you feel understood and free to explore your thoughts and feelings. Together, we come up with the goals that are most important to you. I want you to feel comfortable asking me questions about the therapeutic methods I use to support and guide you. Because I am dedicated to helping my clients achieve the outcomes they desire, I believe its important to monitor our progress from session to session. I seek out your feedback to make sure I am on the right track or to find out if I need to change something about my approach so that we are working together effectively. From the first session to the last, your voice and your perspective is essential in the therapeutic process.
My Credentials
Dr. Thoreson is Executive Director of Parenting After Divorce, a non-profit organization that provides education to parents who are divorcing or legally separating.
Past adjunct faculty member at the University of Denver, Graduate School of Professional Psychology
Past Clinical Supervisor, University of Denver, GSPP
Past adjunct faculty member, University of Colorado, Health Science Center
Specialized training in couples and family therapy from the Gottman Institute in Seattle, WA and the Mental Research Institute in Palo Alto, CA
Sandcastles & Psychotherapy
You can learn a lot about a person by watching the way they build a sandcastle, the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once said. The first person will proceed hesitantly, focused on construction, fretting all the while about the inevitable return of the waves. The second person won't even start building: why bother the tide will only destroy it. The third person embraces the unavoidable and throws themself into the work regardless, joyful but not oblivious.
My philosophy is that we're all three people at once. Depending on our circumstances, one may rise to the surface, but often these different aspects of ourselves leave us confused and feeling stuck.
The aim of the psychotherapy I practice is to develop emotional intelligence, which can help us reconcile the different aspects of who we are. I see the outcome of effective psychotherapy as greater emotional maturity, which means the capacity to be multiple contexts at once, able to see ourself as the fluid, flexible, and often contradictory human beings we are.
I invite you to see psychotherapy as a safe space during which you may learn to hold the disparate, contradictory aspects of yourself in mind without getting drawn into an anxious and controlling stance toward one side of yourself or the other.
Life Transitions
One way to view life is we are all wandering down a path and we inevitably come to a series of suspension bridges. Some look shakier than others. Once we take a few steps out, we find ourselves suddenly feeling ungrounded, less secure, strung up between two places, residing neither here nor there.
One aim of psychotherapy is to find creative ways of approaching change by asking particular kinds of questions that help us live more embodied, finding stability within the instability.
One thing is for certain, significant life transitions can be terrifying, but they can also clear the way for moments of clarity, creativity, and joy. That's what we will aim for together.
Other aims of my work include: to help you feel more at ease, parent effectively, connect with family members, be more comfortable with intimacy, to feel stronger, more vital, more creative, and above all, to be more yourself.