WELCOME TO Three Rivers Mindfulness Training & Psychotherapy
Three Rivers is a group psychotherapy practice, as well as a center for mindfulness training, located in Sacramento, CA.
You Belong.
As therapists and teachers, our mission is to offer services that promote growth, liberation, and equity. We are advocates of belonging, and we accept and practice from the fundamental truth that when there is a threat to belonging for one person or group, it is a threat to the integrity of the whole.
We all need to (and do) belong. It is wired into our neurobiology as the primary metric for safety. So when we experience repeated threats to belonging, it shakes us and shapes us. These threats can occur in early caregiving relationships, or in the context of racism, sexism, heterosexism, ableism, transphobia, or classism. Threats to belonging are at the heart of trauma, and can push us into our fight/flight/freeze system, sometimes without our conscious awareness. We are dedicated to healing individual and collective trauma and helping our clients and students build strong, authentic relationships with self and other.
"Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive."
– Dalai Lama
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Compassionate, Effective team
We Understand The Art & Science of
Human Growth & Connection
COUPLES THERAPY
We practice Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT). EFT is a short-term, structured approach to couples therapy developed in the 1980’s by Dr. Sue Johnson. We use EFT for one reason: because it works.
MINDFULNESS TRAINING
At Three Rivers, we think of mindfulness as the process by which a person comes fully alive. We currently offer 8-week courses in a research-supported program called Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC).
INDIVIDUAL THERAPY
We love the journey of relationally-oriented individual therapy. If you feel stuck in old patterns, we can help. We know the art and science of moving from unnecessary suffering to authenticity, freedom, and connection.
MINDFUL SELF COMPASSION
We specialize in teaching a particular mindfulness program: Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC). MSC is a set of skills designed to help you respond to yourself with kindness when you are in distress. For most of us, making an embarrassing mistake is an occasion for self-criticism not self-compassion. Many of us wouldn’t blink an eye at saying truly horrible things to ourselves (“I’m such an idiot!”)–things we would never say to another human being who is suffering. Unfortunately, habitually treating ourselves this way breeds depression, anxiety, shame, anger, and relationship problems. Learning to treat ourselves compassionately has been shown by research to help in each of these areas. In our clinical experience it is the only way to heal shame–which is the destructive common denominator at the root of so many of the ways we suffer as human beings. MSC is typically taught as an 8-week class. Please click here for more information about our current course offerings.
EMOTIONALLY FOCUSED COUPLES THERAPY
Have you ever felt like you are having the same fight with your partner over and over again? Maybe the fights differ in their content, but the positions and feelings remain painfully stuck? Perhaps your conflict tends to be fiery and explosive, or maybe it’s a cold, slow burn. Either way, if you’re ready to step out of the entrenched pattern that has taken over your relationship, EFT can help. Grounded in the science of human attachment, EFT is the only model of couple intervention that uses a systematic empirically validated theory of adult bonding as the basis for understanding and alleviating relationship problems. You will feel from your first session that your therapist comes equipped with a map that the three of you will reference as you move from cycles of distress to security and connection. Click here to learn more.