ABOUT

Oakley Ogden is a psychotherapist with over 17 years experience working with young adults and women struggling with anxiety, depression, suicidal tendencies, the emotional battles associated with mystery illness, life transitions, and a general loss of purpose. She offers both young people and adults the tools to increase self-awareness, strengthen emotional, mental, & spiritual character, and attain the vision they holds for their lives.

Oakley’s work can be summarized as a synthesis of western psychology and eastern philosophies. Specifically, her approach to therapy is couched in a holistic and collaborative model. Theories from person-centered psychotherapy, Gestalt, and strength-based psychotherapy are all incorporated. Different techniques and philosophies from eastern traditions, somatic (body-centered) psychotherapy, and psychodrama, play key roles as well. One of the distinguishing factors of Oakley’s work, however, is the use and emphasis on mindfulness – learning to be present with what we are feeling and thinking without judgment. As part of that work, she’s spent almost two decades developing programs and curriculum for inner transformation and sustainable community change. Oakley has offered her work throughout the United States, Japan, Ireland, and Trinidad/Tobago.

My desire to seek that which lay beyond the boundaries of what’s familiar started early in my life. At age two, I set out into the forest, letting the screen door slam behind me, and leaving my mother frantic. Terrified that she had lost me, she called the police, who found me hours later napping in the neighbors field a mile or so away.

Here’s the thing, I remember the event like it was yesterday. The brown fur of my dog trotting beside me, the crunch of the dried leaves, the low hanging branches, and the drive of curiosity that tingled through my small body, pushing me forward. What was behind that tree? What was next around that bramble? And then, the awe of the neighbor’s field. The great expanse. How it felt. As if my eyes were drinking in the world, oxygen rich blood flooding my body. I felt like the fresh fall air itself. I felt free. That’s how it began: curiosity, exploration, discovery, exaltation, presence, stillness. I was hooked.

I tell this story to demarcate the myth that there was a point in time in which I decided to become who I am today. Rather, the career I have today is an expression of who I have grown into and who I am always becoming. My career is an outcropping of a life being richly lived. Put simply, everything I offer today is a result of decades of searching, studying, tearing down inner walls, and continually seeking out the great expanse that lies beyond the forest.

The curiosity I was born with led me to studying deeply with extraordinary leaders and visionaries. I’ve been taught for decades by teachers, mentors, and coaches because I believe that we are as good as the people we surround ourselves with. These opportunities have been a privilege in which I have humbly done my best to embody and carry forth all that I have learned and all that’s been bestowed upon me.

Today, I am a guide and a support, and always an explorer who is still on her own path, opening, unfolding, and endlessly seeing beyond the natural stopping points. Everything I have done for myself, I offer to you: the work to move through the familiar and stuck places, support in identifying the truth behind the story, and the ability to safely explore your own extraordinary capacity. My work supports you in discovering and nurturing a deeper truth in yourself. You’ll learn to trust yourself in a new way, trusting life in a way that opens the doors of transformation to you. As those who have been, and continue to be, devoted to me and my evolution, I am honored to offer my devotion and skill to your evolution and the truth of your being.