Evolve In Nature Psychotherapy

Anxiety is often both a physical and emotional response to fear and the suppression of fear. Anxiety can manifest acutely in feelings of stress, nervousness, or worry in response to specific situations. Sometimes people feel overwhelmed by tasks that are required of them either at work, in relationship, or as parent, and it can feel difficult to engage socially or accomplish the things a person wants that brings them joy.

Chronic illness not only impacts external relationships, but it impacts the relationship we have to our body. It is unpredictable. It causes pain. It causes mistrust in the body. To help heal the relationship with the body, we provide psychoeducation on the nervous system, how chronic illness disrupts its normal functioning, and how that disruption can exasperate chronic illness symptoms. This in turn helps quell the chronic illness symptoms and moves towards developing a healthy relationship with the body.

We, as your psychotherapists, will collaborate with you to alleviate present discomfort and decrease long-term suffering. This approach involves a compassionate and cooperative process of body-centered psychotherapy where clients engage in feeling their bodily sensations, recognizing their emotions, identifying any attachments or associations with those emotions, and enabling the release of stored emotions to provide relief.

Relationship counseling creates an opportunity for understanding one another’s deeper, unconscious blockages, fundamental needs, and patterns in the relationship. This commonly connects to our earliest and most powerful emotional experiences. Discovering these older wounds, how those are being triggered in relationship present day, and through mutual understanding, a couple often finds new strategies for enjoying their relationship and rebuilding intimacy and connection.

Approximately twice a year Evolve In Nature offers group therapy for adults who grew up in households with alcoholism or other substance abuse/addiction. This group is open to all adults who are interested in healing from the patterns of behavior perpetuated in an alcoholic family system.

At Evolve In Nature, we provide compassionate trauma-informed therapy utilizing neuroscience, somatic-based, and attachment-based therapies to foster healing and growth. In the container of the therapeutic relationship, we work with the body to stabilize a person’s nervous system, building sensation awareness in order to support the nervous system in moving trauma through the body, thereby unlocking it from the flight, fight, or freeze response, which is the cause of much fear, anxiety, dissociation, and depression. We also utilize mindfulness techniques, EMDR, and cognitive interventions when necessary to dismantle long-held negative beliefs and untangle present triggers from past experiences. Additional modalities that are prescribed in supporting the body to heal from trauma can include yoga and massage.

At Evolve in Nature, nature-based or wilderness therapy is individualized therapy in a natural setting. These sessions take place outdoors instead of in the office, using traditional psychotherapy practices, such as: body-centered psychotherapy, mindfulness based therapy, EMDR therapy, psycho-education, gestalt therapy and when appropriate, combine experiences in nature as a catalyst for change and personal growth. We believe nature is a natural healer.

The goal of EMDR therapy is to support an individual to identify and process these stuck pieces, the disturbing event so that the symptoms can decrease, and one can feel more alive. This process is through bilateral stimulation, right-to-left eye movement, tactile stimulation (hand paddles), or audible sound. The bilateral stimulation activates the right and left hemispheres of the brain to work at the same time supporting an individual to process emotional experiences, which are trapped or blocked in the nervous system. This ultimately generates a mind-body connection and allows oneself to free the blocks and regain mental and emotional health.

Dealing with loss is difficult, whether it’s due to death, an illness diagnosis, a breakup, a move, or another life event. Adjusting to a new reality is challenging. It may require developing new skills, new routines, new plans, new support networks, and even a new sense of identity.

We offer culturally sensitive grief support as you navigate the uncharted waters of the life cycle, as you explore the meaning of life and loss, as you explore your own mortality and purpose, and as you develop a new reality. We offer a relational and somatic therapeutic approach that may also include existential therapy and nature-based therapy. Together, we will co-create an approach that is unique to your situation, your grief process, and your goals for wellness. There is no “right” way to grieve, and in therapy there is no judgment about your experience or your needs. In addition to individual therapy, we offer grief couples counseling and grief therapy groups.

At Evolve In Nature we are advocates for one’s full expression and embodiment of Self, including one’s sexual orientation and gender identity. LGBTQ folx face unscrupulous discrimination and abjection of their rights. These issues are even more significant for people of color and transgender and gender-nonconforming (TGNC) people. As a result of cultural discrimination, many LGBTQ folx face rejection from their families, from people they love, and their communities at large, which places them at a higher risk for mental health issues. This is especially true for people coming out in mid-life or later in life, as the gap in generational acceptance of various sexual orientations and gender identities is substantial.

We offer regular wilderness therapy group trips. Many are multi-day backpacking excursions, and our clients have called them life-changing, transformative, and deeply healing.

It is an honor to hold a career as a psychotherapist, generating more healing and creating more love. I enjoy teaching people how to better understand themselves, move toward healthy behaviors, create loving relationships, and reclaim wholeness, connection, and a meaningful life. I work from a holistic perspective, blending body-centered psychotherapy, mindfulness, and nature-based elements to help individuals and couples thrive. Sessions involve collaborating on an integrative treatment approach, combining insight, skills-based techniques, and creating objectives to meet goals and help clients understand how their past experiences and relationships shape who they are now. My work is to help people remove the obstacles that stand in the way of healing and one's capacity to be the best and truest version of one's self.

My professional lens is deeply rooted in modern neuroscience, specifically trauma-informed attachment and somatic therapy. From this perspective, I utilize an integrated approach to achieve healing which includes psychoeducation, nature-based/wilderness therapy, mindfulness, body-based, gestalt, and psychodynamic interventions. I partner with individuals and couples who are wanting to work with/on their relationships, family dynamics, communication skills, trauma (past or present), grief, anxiety, and/or depression. I am deeply committed to the therapeutic process, offering a safe and compassionate environment for people to engage directly in meaningful work that creates change and possibility.

In addition to a wide variety of trauma-informed clinical counseling skills, Megan is trained in EMDR therapy, trauma therapy, and nature-based therapy from the Somatic Wilderness Therapy Institute and the School of Lost Borders.

Water is an incredible resource and teacher in my life. It has taught lessons of change and adaptation, learning how to work with obstacles with flexibility. I have watched how particles settle when water is still and clear, and when it is turbulent it becomes murky. I have learned how to relax and surrender and let it hold me. And I have been humbled by its force. Most importantly I have learned acceptance, like the quote from Jon Kabat-Zinn I can’t make the waves stop but I can learn how to ride them.

As a person who was born and raised in Colorado, the mountains have always been a place of healing and homecoming. The wild, rough, and rugged terrain ever-shifting with the cycle of the seasons serves as a continual reminder that we must also learn how to shed and grow with the cycles of life. In the hustle and bustle of our busy, modern lives we can often lose touch with the natural rhythms of the earth, of our bodies, and of our souls.

In my life, the outdoors have always been a welcoming place of contemplation and tranquility. Nature has served me as both the teacher and the container. The lessons I have learned through time spent outdoors have been some of the most important in my life. Even when sessions are indoors I look to replicate the stillness, comfort, and spaciousness that nature provides. Nature directs us to experience sensation, notice natural rhythms, and hold larger perspectives, showing us the path to healing. In returning to nature, we can learn how to return to ourselves and our bodies.

Radical acceptance and meaningful connection are the backbones of my life and practice. I firmly believe each of us owns unique parts of ourselves that not only make us different but also make us capable. Sometimes a tree must twist and bend to reach the light it needs; just because its growth looks different doesn’t mean it’s not still growing.

Whether quietly observing the sky from a window, sinking into a body of water, or hiking up a mountain trail, it is in nature where I feel my most authentic self. I find natural spaces support a feeling of interconnectedness, stillness, and unconditional acceptance regardless of what might be going on in my mind. Sinking into this interconnectedness, I’ve become keenly aware of the life lessons we can learn from observing and interacting with the natural world. It is through this connection with nature that I am reminded that we are never truly alone.

I am so glad you are here. It is incredibly brave to take this step toward connecting with others in a way that will inevitably ask a lot of you. Therapy requires you to be raw and vulnerable. I believe in creating a space that allows for the comfortable and uncomfortable parts of processing, leading to personal and mutual growth.