At my heart center, I believe in the power of therapy to transform lives and which to me means being able to increasingly shift from surviving life to thriving in life--come what may.

With years 16 years of experience practicing as a Marriage and Family Therapist, I have honed my skills in guiding clients through the personal growth journey, and continue to do so.

I've learned that life is about relationships, and that healing and recovering from past traumas is a process that involves healing what we've come to believe about ourselves. This requires a multi-pronged approach.

An aspect of this is that I cannot mature into my full potential without enough people I'm connected to who are "good enough" (from the research of a good enough mother/parent in attachment science) and are on a similar path of recovery and/or therapy. 

By having a supportive, like-minded group of people, otherwise known as community, it puts us in a position to get "good enough" compassion and "good enough" connection with others. When we get sustained reparative relationships with a group of people, it literally heals, and therefore, changes the wiring of our brain, and allows us to shift into more attachment security.

Simultaneously, these connections within a therapeutic-type of community allows us to continually identify and resolve the negative self perceptions we still have of ourselves, which shifts our view of ourselves and the world to more self-accepting and self-compassionate ones. 

My passion for inner child healing motivates me to aim to foster a safe, nurturing environment where clients can explore their true selves and become who they were meant to be. Kind of like a process of finding oneself as we shift out of the old conditioning from our upbringing into who we really want to be and can be. 

During my years in practice, I was trained in EMDR, mindfulness, attachment science and Emotionally Focused Therapy for couples and families. I also  learned Internal Family Systems, and went through the psychoanalytic program in psychodynamic psychotherapy at the Newport Psychoanalytic Institute in Tustin, Ca.

Cumulatively, all this helps me understand people on a deeper level relationally and psychologically, blending my knowledge, experience and intuition with compassion.

As an intern in private practice in Newport Beach, Ca., I learned how to run a practice and delved deep into issues like developmental trauma, addictions and relationship issues. Once licensed I moved my practice to Corona, Ca., nestled in the Inland Empire and right near Orange County, where I grew up. 

While doing more post-graduate education on attachment and childhood trauma, I found Patrick Teahan, LICSW, who educates on those topics, and I've since trained with Amanda Curtin, LICSW, who developed the Relational Recovery Process (RRP) model of group therapy, which focuses on inner child/developmental healing. The personal, hands on experience I've received with her and my fellow group members has been transformational and the most cathartic experience I've gone through. 

With love,

Tyra

tyrabutlermft@gmail.com