Marriage, Family Therapy from a Bioenergetic Perspective              HOME

 

 

       Bioenergetics is a relational psychotherapy using the body and its energy that serves to inform the clinician on the relational patterns of the client.  Marriage, Family Therapists are relationally oriented and yet we remain under-trained about the context or vehicle that brings the client to our office, that the clients live in and through which the client relates to his or her world---the body.

       Using this theoretical orientation, a Bioenergetically trained therapist is able to expand their understanding of how the client’s defenses translate into bodily presentations.  These somatic awareness tools add to a therapist’s understanding of the client’s reality.  Thus, the nonverbal language presented in session is given translation. 

        With this expanded awareness, the Bioenergetic therapist is better able to offer the client psycho-education, insight, and alternatives to these characteristic dysfunctional patterns of being and relating in the world.  Furthermore, the body’s energy patterns are directly related to an individual’s experiences in life.  Just as the psyche has had to organize defenses in relationship to environmental responses, the person’s body has also been present and experiencing the gamut of emotions and feelings---all physical felt-senses.  The Bioenergetic therapist is able to utilize this added information to facilitate the client in releasing past experiences and integrating her awareness of self into the present moment. 

 Tarra Stariell is a fully trained Bioenergetic psychotherapist who has been in private practice for over four years.  She has two offices, in Solana Beach and Escondido.  She has extensive experience working with children and adolescents, Vietnam Veterans, pregnant and parenting teens with substance abuse problems; adolescents in the juvenile justice system; substance abusing women and the homeless.

Tarra has also worked as the family therapist for a local agency that was the recipient of a research project on addictions, sponsored by Columbia University and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.  In addition, she has participated in a research study on Attachment Theory with a local noted specialist in that area, Vincentia Schroeter, Ph.D.

Tarra’s specialties include addictions, dissociative disorders, bereavement, trauma, cult recovery and adolescents.

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 @Copyright 2001,2003 by Tarra Judson Stariell, MFT, CBT