About

“The gift we receive on the underworld journey becomes the gift we offer in return to life. The offering of that gift is our contribution to the ongoing evolution of the human species, whose collective awakening is essential for the continued inhabitation of all species of earth.”
-Bill Plotkin, Soulcraft

Hi, I’m Annalise!

Like you, I’ve been on a tender path of becoming and unfurling for years, teasing out what is my surface-level story, and what is the deeper, truer, mythic story underneath. The deeper, truer story is that my life circumstances perfectly set me up to have a heartfelt longing to find the living pulse of the divine feminine, to embody her, and to share her love in books and poems, and by helping others find their true, open-hearted, loving nature, resolving anything that gets in the way of simply being present with an open heart. The more surface-level story is that I’m a writer and an EMDR-trained Psychedelic Psychotherapist in private practice. And it is with great reverence and humility that I add: In addition to over a decade of clinical experience, my most important initiations have been my death experience in psychedelic ceremony in the Amazon jungle, and my opportunity to become an initiate of the Qero indigenous mystics of the Andes. I found the living pulse of the divine feminine in the Amazon, in the rhythm of every singing cricket and frog, and when I died, I melted into her green, dancing vastness completely. We are all a part of this. I also found her in the little pulse of my one human heart and the voice of love and wisdom that I hear there. Reclaiming and trusting that voice, I believe, is central to all healing and integrative work. It’s also, often, the tension that pulls poets forward on the pilgrimage of their lives.

To tell you something more about my identities as you make the best choice for yourself about who might be a great therapist for you : I am a sexually fluid/questioning, straight-passing cisgender woman who is structurally White with mostly Scottish-Irish ancestry, some colonizer/oppressor ancestry that I know I need to keep trying to understand, and hidden non-European ancestry. I am a multiple sexual assault survivor. I am committed to cultural humility and to educating myself on the insidious ways racism and white supremacy can seep into even the most well-intentioned antiracist therapist’s practice. I am committed to creating a safe therapy container for BIPOC, especially now that I am providing psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy – a space where anything and everything in the relational field is amplified. I take my commitment to do no harm in this regard very seriously, and consider it a professional responsibility to keep doing my work on all levels.

You might call me a weird mystic poet and an ultra-Pisces with a buttload of Capricorn in the fourth house. Really, I’m a companion to you at this moment of your soul’s journey of unfolding and becoming, helping you to join hands with your greatest destiny. When I meet a new client, I am committed to seeing them in their most radiant, awakened light, viewing the work as an invitation into the intertwining of destiny with the heart’s deepest desires, rather than as a mission to fix symptoms or to sedate and control pain. I am more interested in working in a holistic way that shifts pain at the root and re-recruits all of our bound up, painful emotional energy in service to ongoing expansion, and a deepening sense of purpose. And in the case of painful, chronic conditions, we can shift our experience of that pain and the meaning we give to it. So, yes, pain into purpose, mess into message, and all of those tropes that are so often repeated because they are true.

I’m trained in an array of esoteric as well as classic, evidence-based modalities. So you can always ask for oracle cards, astrology or hypnotism to come into the mix, or I might make suggestions. I am constantly learning and adding to my so-called apothecary cabinet, drawing intuitively from what I know in sessions. And it’s not only about my intuition. I believe we are all born with powerful knowing and creativity, and I consider a pivotal part of our work to be the glorious reclamation of that.

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Photo by Sarah Deragon

My Top Five (Wait, okay, eight?) Auditory Pleasures:

  • Terence McKenna (the brilliant psychedelic bard of the 1990s)
  • The Brian Jonestown Massacre (a band)
  • WITCH (We Intend to Cause Havoc) (another band)
  • Amadou et Mariam (delicious music)
  • Abner Jay https://youtu.be/WPFMMCQ__f4 (Need I say more?)
  • The Craft Soundtrack (So I can pretend like I’m in the movie…..Yeah.)
  • Nick Cave. And Roky Erickson (Just saw his last ever show in SF, and love him forever.)
  • Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes (In my opinion, the greatest living psychoanalyst, and a writer of books that I would prefer over food even if I was starving.  Many of her books are on Audible, and she has a voice that could bind anyone in a spell they’d be glad never to leave.)

“The millennial program is to put the art pedal to the floor.”

-Terence McKenna –


 

My Creds:

Most importantly, I practice empathic attunement in every single session. Sometimes degrees and credentials can become a clutter, a mask or a distraction from the very most important element of any healing relationship: That you feel truly seen and heard.

    • Moreover, I’ve taken it upon myself to learn directly and experientially from Shipibo medicine men and women and from other shamanic lineage-keepers, and also from Andrew Harvey (modern mystic and spiritual teacher), from Alexandra Roxo (luminous voice in the divine feminine conversation), Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes (senior Jungian analyst and author of the canonical Women Who Run with the Wolves), and Meggan Watterson (feminist theologian).

      • Oxbridge Masters in Philosophy from Trinity College Dublin (2010) (followed by a jaunt to India where I volunteered in an orphanage for HIV-positive children in Jaipur)
      • Masters in Social Work (Mental Health Concentration) from USC (2015)
      • Ten years of experience in mental health at the time of this writing (working mostly in residential programs and community-based mental health programs for traumatized children and youth, with only one of those years a blend of chemical dependency inpatient and outpatient experience, interspersed with some visits to clients in an adjunct skilled nursing home for people with HIV/AIDS)
      • Approved in February 2019 by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences to practice psychotherapy under my own license (hence the ‘L’ in LCSW). (It means I’ve collected thousands of post-Masters clinical hours, done a bunch of post-Masters trainings, and passed a couple of truly butt-numbing exams, years after finishing grad school.)
      • EMDR trained and cleared by EMDRIA and the EMDR Institute to use this heavily evidence-based trauma treatment in my practice. (By the way, it’s not ONLY effective for adult-onset, specific, “big T” trauma.) “CBT” has been a buzz word (or acronym?) in mental health for the last couple of decades (mostly because insurance companies love it). Think of EMDR as “CBT-plus”. CBT appears efficacious when outcome measures are taken immediately following treatment. Years later, however, the results do not seem to hold up. It’s because CBT does not address the “root” of the current distress, and modalities that allow for deeper work (as EMDR does) tend to produce longer-lasting results. I think of EMDR as the icing on the cake of the last century of Western developments in understanding the unconscious, blended with modern developments in neurobiology. It’s powerful stuff. (It’s like expedited depth work.)
      • In 2019, I saw the official publication by Oxford University Press of Women’s Journey to Empowerment in the 21st Century: A Transnational Approach, to which I contributed (or, wrote) a chapter.  The original tract of writing was completed in 2015.

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    • SF Jung Institute – Clinical Applications of Jungian Analysis six-month program graduate
    • JFK University – Clinical Applications of Deep Imagination certified
    • Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes – Original Voice Creativity and Dream-Tending Intensive Workshop Trainee
    • Certified Hypnotist
    • Portland Psychic School – Psychic Meditation Class Graduate
    • Colette Baron-Reid’s Oracle School – Certified Oracle Guide
    • Alanna Kaivalya’s Alchemical Astrology School – Certified Astrologer
    • In 2021, I introduced my first full-length book, Heal Your Witch Wound to the world with the tremendous support of Paper Raven Books. I was humbled and astounded to watch it become a #1 bestseller in several Amazon categories in its first week.
    • In 2022, I became a lineage-initiated mesa carrier, certified Shamanic Energy Medicine practitioner and Holistic Nutrition Coach through Dr. Alberto Villoldo’s Four Winds Academy. I also was privileged to participate in a series of ayahuasca ceremonies with Shipibo medicine men and women in the rainforests of Peru in the same year. These experiences have added to my competency and scope when it comes to finding the overlaps between shamanic work and Jungian work, and to integrating lifestyle medicine interventions (such as awareness of the way nutrition impacts mental health) holistically into the way I work with therapy clients.
    • I am currently engaged in a year-long training at the Integrative Psychiatry Institute. Please visit my PAT page for more information on the training and new therapy options with me coming very soon (by early Spring 2024).
    • I believe we can be the revolution we all long to see on this planet by resolving whatever is standing between our broken heart and our beautifully broken OPEN heart, our creative brilliance, and our sacred calling. Schedule a free 20-minute consultation call if you’re ready to live the life you were meant to live.


45 Franklin St. Suite 214
Orange County, CA 94102

annalise@deeperwelltherapy.com
929-487-5488

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