Rate Spencer Porter

As a licensed therapist here in Maryland for over three decades, I have developed a deeply rewarding practice of assisting individuals as they navigate the complex emotional landscapes that each of us encounter in our inner and outer daily lives.

These shared and often similarly challenging experiences help to build a useful platform for tending to what is uniquely one's own.

Such ways of understanding our human complexities can actually simplify our way of living.

Increasingly, the collective forms of othering each other that our times are revealing, feel more understandable when our personal fields of trauma are noticed from outside their defended perimeter.

Sharing attention to what is missing and what is present in one's daily life can also be an under nourished source of greater clarity and peace of mind.

Noticing the ways that past experiences constrict and overdetermine our present lives is an important step in cultivating an inner repertoire of self liberation.

Choosing to face into a tender, frightened, angry, or despondent part of ourselves requires a sense of mutual trustworthiness that only compassionate, respectful, and courageous interactions can bring.

If we can address the inevitable mis-steps in our work, our very differences can teach us to find common ground as we try to bridge racial, gender, age, or other determinants of our sense of self.

It such apparent impasses show up, and the desire to tune our differences to the larger task of our work makes sense to us both, there are rewards to be cultivated for creative life among chosen are necessary diversity.

If not, we can look for a more timely and compatible therapist to engage with.

own 'wilderness' dimensions open to discovery and often inhabited by childhood fears and protective fields that, while protecting a younger part of our lives, have denied access to energies that adulthood really needs.

Such ways of understanding our own human complexity actually simplifies living.

I had a mentor who described all forms of 'sickness' as 'home-sickness'.

In any case, many times our experiences of anxiety or of depression within which remembering, cultivating, and sometimes finding even discovering from a new vantage point becomes

I am committed to creating a supportive environment where clients can explore their feelings, develop resilient coping strategies, and cultivate meaningful personal growth. My therapeutic practice is grounded in respect, active listening, and a genuine dedication to helping individuals find their inner strength and navigate emotional challenges with confidence and hope.