Conscious Connections
is a well-established therapeutic private practice in Seattle, Washington.
“Just where you are, that’s the place to start.”
Pema Chödrön
My name is Marissa Grasmick, and I am a professional licensed mental health counselor serving individual adults and couples.
My unique approach to therapy weaves the medical with the mystical, the clinical and the contemplative, the somatic and the spiritual, the neurobiological and the phenomenological, the verbal and the visceral.
I serve as a bridge between the realities of modern life and the cosmic perspective. I help people form a deeper relationship with themselves and others by shifting them from unfulfilling patterns of disconnection, to authentic rituals of conscious connection.
I am a somatic relational transpersonal therapist and art therapist, and with a combination of practices, I encourage deep psycho-spiritual work that is grounded in clinical experience and evidence-based knowledge. Read more about my approach to therapy here.
I help people bridge the gap from disconnection to connection
Who I Help
Conscious Connections is a safe space for adults to cultivate authentic relationships and intimacy with self and others, soul, and surroundings. The space is inclusive of all genders, sexualities, and expressions of identities.
I invite you to view our work together as a sacred invitation to learn, grow, and expand. Allow me to support you as you step into treating yourself and your vision with reverence.
Explore Topics…
-
Working through depression. Loneliness. Emptiness. Making sense of suffering. Addressing questions such as “Who am I?” and “What’s my purpose?”
-
Effective strategies for managing anxiety. Skill-building for social anxiety.
-
Reducing shame. Processing traumatic memory. Regulating the nervous system. Creating internal safety and healthy boundaries. Building trust.
-
Maintaining healthy relationships. Ending relationships and conscious uncoupling. Successfully starting new relationships. Intimacy-building communication. Progressive relationship paradigms. Sexual intimacy and pleasure.
-
Learning how to best care for yourself. Self acceptance. Reducing Shame. Removing obstacles that limit self love. Distinguishing between self-esteem and self worth.
-
-
Assistance in learning about your boundary style (rigid vs. loose), types of boundaries (internal, external), how to effectively communicate your boundaries, learn where you need more or less.
-
Recognizing the role of control. Creating balance. Finding self worth aside from performance. Reducing self-criticism.
-
Establishing a sense of safety. Rebuilding trust. Reducing the impact of reoccurring nightmares & disturbing imagery. Making sense of mysterious symptoms. Regaining a sense of control.
-
Starting, or deepening an authentic meditation practice. Integrating outer and inner realities. Recognizing the difference between escaping pain and transforming pain. Cultivating mindfulness skills. Maintaining conscious relationships while you are focused on a spiritual path. Welcoming of all faith traditions and how they support your life.
-
or DBT. Concentrating on mindfulness skills. Cultivating tolerance for distressing situations. Building skills for regulating difficult emotional states. Enhancing Interpersonal relationships. (Clients are welcome to request these specific skill-based approaches at any time).
-
Working with restrictive patterns and binging/purging cycles. Reduce shame. Learn the root causes. Learn about the role of control. Address multiple factors such as familial and cultural standards of beauty and success. Develop healthier patterns to cope with feelings.
-
Better understand experiences of altered states of consciousness. Ego-disintegration and reconstruction. Archetypes and symbols. Integrate learning, epiphanies, and insight into everyday routine and ritual.
-
Repairing your relationship with how you care for and treat yourself. Perhaps it involves exercise, diet, self talk, routine, attunement to your needs, and the countless ways we can show up fully to ourselves (and then others). Creating a greater sense of embodiment and regulation.
-
Or HSP. Recognizing traits of an HSP. How self-care and relationships may look different for HSPs. Awareness of needs. Learning about your unique strengths and how to bring them into an often overwhelming world.
-
Creating routines that help support your goals. Setting up a calendar system so that you can be reliable and on-time. Learning how to chip away at larger goals by better structuring your day/week and so on. Freedom in the framework!
Disconnection can be a haunting, confusing & isolating experience.
It happens for many reasons and different lengths of time. The most common form of disconnection I witness is nervous system dysregulation caused by trauma. Our truest selves tend to become buried under layers of protective strategies, childhood wounds, limiting beliefs, and chronic stress.
We may feel familiarity or protection within these layers, but they often prevent us from feeling truly connected and fulfilled. We can feel disconnected from self, other, the natural world, our bodies, our emotions, our breath, or a sense of greater purpose. We can become entranced in the illusion of separateness and feel alienated from the very things that might bring us the deepest sense of being alive.
Whatever it is that brings you to Conscious Connections, I welcome you. Maybe it is disconnection that best describes your experience. Or perhaps you have believed that you should be able to do this on your own, and now you realize the strength in seeking support. You might have a vision for what you want your life to look like, and you can’t seem to put it together. Maybe there’s an outdated pattern you keep repeating, or a sense that you are going in circles. It could be anxiety, depression, painful memories, stress, relationships, self doubt, overwhelm, or some perceived barrier between your experience and what you had hoped for. Sometimes it’s a change that you thought would be great, but even the most welcome of changes come with their fair share of challenges. Whatever circumstance you find yourself in, I welcome you.
“People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.” Joseph Campbell
