Steve is one of a kind, his ability to create safety in a therapeutic setting is unparalleled. As a woman whose trauma has come mostly through men, I was worried about how I would be able to heal having a man take me through my pain. Steve first and foremost created a place for me where I always felt safe just to be. His honesty, kindness and love have made our sessions some of the most transformative I have ever had. I have healed my mistrust and pain with the masculine. His natural ability to gently but strongly take you through your pain is truly life-changing. He has taught me so much about myself in our time together over this last year that I have brought my missing puzzle pieces back in with love and compassion. His abiding presence and commitment to my healing has shown me that I can live my authentic truth. I now live authentically and am able to see my defense mechanisms at work. Steve, thank you from the bottom of my heart for all that you are and for your work. I recommend Steve to anyone looking to heal. 

Lauren Heap- Life Coach. Author. Reiki Master

Steve came into my path as most things that have come to guide me along my way; firstly, perfectly timed and welcomed and secondly, in a way or with a method that makes rational sense to me too. 

Sessions for me are about connecting to ‘feeling’, and sometimes it’s for one minute only! Steve has a gentle way of guiding the tone and setting the mood to encourage the very simple (often elusive!) act of feeling. Always it’s a very real and easy talk around a memory, or life in general, or the way the brain works and how trauma stays … Wherever the session ends up going; I always feel that Steve has a way to help me there. I think when you move through your own stuff in this way – as Steve has too – you just have so much to give and so much understanding for others and their journeys as well. 

The CI approach and fundamentals give a clear and meaningful pathway to working through whatever comes up, or doesn’t, in the session and in life thereafter!  The connections to self that I experience there are for me, jewels, added to my life. I love chatting, laughing, crying, realizing and flowing through my life with Steve.

Jodi

I am incredibly grateful to be able to work with Steve as a Compassionate Inquiry Therapist. Despite having done extensive discovery work including 12 step work, shamanic approaches and body focused therapy I still get the biggest healings from the online CI sessions with Steve. He is truly compassionate in the sense of not letting me slide and picking up on the cues of what is going on while always giving me the time to feel the emotions that are present. I typically turn to Steve with all the big questions in which my protecting barriers from the past are too big to find the answers myself. In all my sessions, I have truly been carried, held and seen. Rarely have I experienced a safer environment than these online sessions. This safe space provided by Steve through his great knowledge and experience is a huge part of what allows my trauma to appear to then be healed. I especially love that there is no nonsense and that the full session is dedicated to feeling as much as currently possible to experience.

Riitta Schäublin, Parenting Coach

Steve came into my life at a crucial time when I was massively motivating myself to make some difficult life choices and changes including cutting off my parents, selling my apartment, and moving abroad to start anew. Having an extensive history of child abuse, my nervous system was overloaded trying to process everything and I was struggling to support myself. But having had positive experiences with Steve in a Compassionate Inquiry Circle and using somatic based therapeutic methods, I reached out for support and am very glad I did.

Steve has many incredible characteristics that allowed me to go very deep and release a lot of pain, hurt, fear, rage, grief, tears, and shame. Firstly, I experienced Steve as having a deep, calm, compassionate, centered, and inviting, open presence. I felt safe to be seen and not needing to do or be anything which allowed me time and space to find out what was needed for me inside. He was very comfortable with just allowing emotions to be there, making space for them to come up, and sometimes not even needing at all to go into the story. This felt liberating to me to just feel without having to try to explain. One crucial opening was having permission to not share what wasn’t ready to be shared. And when I did get activated or lost sharing, Steve’s gentle guidance would help me come back to my body and feel into what was really important for me. With other therapists I’ve often had the feeling that we wasted time, got nowhere, or even went backwards which would cause me incredible amounts of pain and regret. With Steve, I felt pretty much every session was highly productive for me. I continuously felt his focus and presence on me, and that at every moment what I was doing or sharing was helpful and useful for me. Steve also often amazed me in his sensitivity and skillfulness, reflecting or questioning at just the right moment to bring deeper insight or awareness to something I had said. ->…

…         I also greatly appreciated Steve’s humbleness and humility. I never felt looked down upon, pitied, or like a burden, all of which I’ve experienced with other therapists. In this case, I really felt Steve as being consistently and compassionately with me and interested in me and wanting to be of service. Having Steve support me helped me overcome an incredible amount of shame, fear, and invalidation that I received all throughout my childhood and that continues in my psyche today. And also, it was a genuine gift to be able to attune to Steve’s calm presence each week down from the chaoticness of my life. Even before starting the sessions I would notice my body vibrating and releasing energy, starting to feel calm and safe again. I truly believe that just this one benefit of calming my nervous system back into presence and compassion each week gave me a tremendous amount of capacity to face the challenges in my life. I was able to take the risks I needed, not give in to others, and go after what I really want rather than staying stuck, fearful, disconnected, and small.

            Additionally, another thing I found incredibly important for me and my work with Steve was Steve’s flexibility and openness to learning and feedback. I needed to make several schedule changes in the beginning to fit my needs and rather than being put off by my requests, Steve was open to my expression of my needs, which helped me feel like equals. There were also small misattunements, which in the past I may have not felt able to express, but through Steve’s openness and encouragement, I felt able to take the risk and share, correct, and clarify until I felt understood and met. I feel like I was able to grow in noticing my needs, expressing my needs, and feeling capable and worthy that I could actually be met. I wasn’t too messed up and I didn’t have to flee or fight. Someone understood me. ->…

…         And finally, when I felt it in my body that it was time to complete my sessions with Steve, I actually felt safe to listen to it and honor it. This was a huge step for me as well, as rarely have my relationships (including my therapeutic relationships) ended cleanly or well. I had a ton of anxiety on whether I was “good enough” to complete our sessions, I was fearful of disappointing him, that I should do more sessions after all he invested in me, and there was also the voice of fear telling me I was making a mistake and that I was wrong, but I knew if I listened to that I would only be betraying myself. Fortunately, none of these won. And I believe it’s also because I could feel Steve would genuinely be happy for me and encourage me, and he did. I was able to have a great closing session, and feel that I took good care of myself. Boundaries was my final takeaway. That I can need and have boundaries, I don’t owe others anything.

            Overall, my sessions with Steve helped me through some big life hurdles, a lot of very intense and painful trauma release from my earliest childhood wounds, and a lot of powerful growth in worthiness, sense of capability, and self empowerment as well. I feel very grateful and blessed to be able to work with Steve. I highly recommend him to anyone on a similar trajectory of coming back into the body, doing deep emotional work, and looking for a safe enough space and a safe enough person to rewrite old habits and beliefs and grow with. I’m sure there are many more things I received from my sessions that I’m not even aware of yet, but I know this was a crucial piece of healing and growth for me and I’m very grateful for Steve’s support on my journey.

Jay

Even when you have all the pieces of the puzzle in front of you, it doesn’t mean you see the big picture, or can understand your whole story.

I had been looking for a long time before I got the chance to work with Steve. After each session with him, the picture became clearer until, finally, I was able to see it all in front of me. I was amazed. I never would have imagined the impact that trauma could have passed down through generations. All the pain, grief and fear. Without realizing it, all these years I carried within me the Holocaust, the suffering, the fear of death, the fear of the authorities, and of my parents who could not be there for me because of their own trauma. But now I can put my story in its proper place. I am no longer responsible for carrying it around with me and suffering.

Steve helped create a safe place for me right from the beginning, allowing me to sort through all the pieces without fear or shame. Throughout the process, I kept having eye-opening experiences, visions so powerful that I could physically feel them, and I began to understand what authenticity meant. When body and mind respect and listen to each other, you become one with yourself and feel connected to the world.

Steve taught me how to listen to myself and how to let go of fear. I now feel better equipped to interpret the emotions that are manifest as the language of the body without fear or shame, and to include them in my everyday and long-term decision-making.

Steve has a gift that is rare. He took me in without judging. His presence made me feel safe and he gave me confidence so that I could let go. Each session was completed in a way that allowed me to get through the following week on my own. 7 weeks and 8 sessions show the power of CI. I am deeply grateful to Steve for giving me the opportunity to nurture and grow my sense of compassion. Thank you.

Iris Stern