Contact
Canal Place Office Park
150 Nickerson Street
Suite 203
Seattle, WA 98109
Phone + 206.352.1900
Welcome! My name is Harriet Cannon. I am a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Mental Health Counselor with over 20 years experience as a psychotherapist and consultant in the US and internationally. I help individuals, couples, families, and organizations create satisfying connections in their relationships, and success in their professional environments.
To facilitate effective change I believe in a systemic philosophy. I use methods which consider not only an individual’s world view but also the larger social, economic, and political context in which a client lives and works.
Areas of Specialization:
- Life, Work, and Relationship Transitions
- Multicultural Identity and Mixed Cultural Relationships
- International Travelers; US Expatriates and Repatriation
Life, Work, Relationship, Transitions
Even if you are on the right track, you will get run over if you just sit there.
Many people find psychotherapy or consultation helpful in navigating transitions such as: career changes, difficulties in your life as a couple, personal or professional losses, planning for or living in retirement.
Experience matters. With over 20 years working with individuals, couples and business clients, I bring knowledge and creative flexibility to my work with people in transition. Together we look at your historical world view and the context in which you now live and work, then we create a strategy for your most effective movement forward.
I believe success comes from self understanding, insight about what specific attitudes and behaviors have affected your decisions, and mentoring to implement deep, creative change.
A typical experience in therapy with a systemic approach can include:
1. The “Shake Up
Your life is taking a turn of direction which you may or may not have chosen. Your perspective will never be quite the same again. There are changes and losses to acknowledge and work through.
2. Values Clarification
How do you want to interpret the important values, events and patterns in your past in light of the present? What kind of re-evaluation is necessary to give you the best guidance now?
3. A New Mindset
Together we delve into unproductive thought patterns and behaviors that are blocking your creative work and relationships. When you understand the interrelationship of personal, family, work and economic influences in your life, you gain confidence and new strategies you can act on.
4. Staying Fresh
A new plan is the first goal. How does it work as you begin to live it? Having a systemic perspective will keep you on track, fine tuning your new direction, and avoiding the tendency to slip into unproductive patterns which no longer fit your world view.
Start by doing what’s necessary, then what’s possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible.
Life Balance Inventory (click link to download PDF)
Multicultural Identity and Relationships
The heart has its reasons that reason doesn’t understand.
1. Communication
My role is to provide psychotherapy, intercultural communication, education, and training for individuals, couples, and organizations who desire more effective, harmonious relationships. You may be seeking these services either personally or professionally in our vast multicultural, global community.
2. Cultural Identity
I assist clients in clearly defining themselves by understanding and integrating their various life influences and experiences. This includes languages, events, and cultures experienced while growing up or living in a multicultural or multiracial environment, or living as an expatriate.
People in mixed cultural relationships can have a complicated mourning process
for a lost country, people, or support. These losses can contribute to
misunderstandings and feelings of isolation from friends, partners or children. I
assist clients to work through culture loss and the feelings which accompany it.
Your Cultural Identity Changes As Your Child Grows (click link to download PDF)
Strategies for Bi-Cultural Parents (click link to download PDF)
3. Bi-cultural Couples and Multicultural Families
By facilitating understanding, communication, conflict resolution, I counsel clients who are aware that their cultural differences are creating problems in their relationships. This can include transitions as a couple finds their bi cultural identity, communication in parenting as a mixed cultural couple, and conflict with adult children or with extended family members.
Bi-Cultural Families and the In-Law Connection (click link to download PDF)
The finest thing in the world…is knowing how to belong to oneself.
International Travelers; US Expatriates and Repatriation
Every trip to a foreign country can be a love affair, where you are left puzzling who you are and who you’ve fallen in love with.
1. US Expatriate; Assessment, Training and Preparation
How? By accessing the relocation risks, coaching to ease those risks, and preparing clients psychologically prior to an international relocation.
I teach the skills needed to cope with intense cultural transitions to avoid the pitfalls of stress-related health problems, relationship problems, and depression, while managing personal and professional agendas.
Time and schedule differences, physical travel stress, experiencing cultures and exhaustion due to jet lag, all make communication difficult when you are traveling for international for business or study. As a counselor, and former expatriate I tailor just the right advice, resources and collaborative problem solving, which facilitate your successful international transitions.
International Travel Toolkit (click link to download PDF)
2. Culture Shock
Moving internationally can be a philosophical, emotional, and physical shake up to the world as you know it. Additionally, many expatriates and frequent international travelers face challenges in keeping their couple and family relationships satisfying.
Harriet Cannon will take you through the phases of cultural adjustment with humor and insight. Practical self assessments, questionnaires and experiential exercises are tailored to your specific needs on how to live successfully and minimize the stress of adjustment to living in a new country and culture.
The Culture Shock Cycle (click link to download PDF)
3. Coming Home after Living Internationally; Expat, Repat and Beyond
I assist clients in navigating the challenges that come with re-entering their culture of origin and taking best advantage of personal and professional strengths accrued while living internationally.
Consultation can help you use your creativity to take best advantage of your acquired knowledge in both your personal and professional life. I can help you manage your life, work, and relationships during re-entry culture shock using practical tips, questionnaires and experiential exercises.
Repatriation and Love of Language (click link to download PDF)
Strategies for Bi-Cultural Parents (click link to download PDF)
There are people everywhere who form a Fourth World, or a Diaspora of their own….They share with each other, across the nations, common values of humor and understanding. When you are among them you know you will not be mocked or resented, because they will not care about your race, your faith, your sex, or your nationality, and they suffer fools if not gladly, at least sympathetically.
Site designed by Dolphin Design.