Maple Leaf DBT PLLC
Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Training in Seattle
About Terry
Terry Jaworski, MA, LMHC, is our fabulous co-leader. Terry has been providing
DBT for the last seventeen years. Between 2004 and 2008 she led a DBT skills
class in a clinic in Tukwila. She joined Maple Leaf in 2010 as co-leader of
our late class, and in fall of 2014 signed on to co-lead our early class as well.
She is warm, compassionate, and genuine, and brings with her wisdom and
an irreverent humor that eases the growing pains inherent in learning new
skills.
Terry has a life-long meditation practice. Mindfulness is her favorite part of
the DBT curriculum. Of the class she has remarked more than once, "I like
being in a community of people who value and practice mindfulness."
Terry is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor in the State of Washington. Already having a BA in Psychology from the University of California Riverside, she went on in 1983 to earn a Masters Degree in Contemplative Psychology from Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. Her education provided her extensive exposure to both western and eastern philosophies about the human psyche. Mindfulness and meditation were central to her training. After completing graduate school she began her career as an outpatient therapist in a community mental health clinic. She moved to Seattle in 1988 and continued working in community mental health, at first in crisis intervention and stabilization, and later as a therapist in her clinic's outpatient counseling institute. She has a wide experience treating many mental health troubles, including schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders, bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety, trauma and abuse, drug and alcohol addiction, problems with impulse control and emotional regulation, grief, and stress.
Terry has been interested in mindfulness-based cognitive behavioral therapy since 1994 when she attended a training in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), another researched and validated treatment shown to be helpful to people with a wide variety of problems. ACT is about getting to know unpleasant feelings, then learning not to act upon them, and to not avoid situations where they are evoked. Its therapeutic effect is a positive spiral where feeling better leads to a better understanding of the truth. DBT is a natural extension of what Terry finds most helpful to people seeking to overcome suffering.
"I believe that our true nature is comprised of awareness and compassion. In terms of individual therapy, this compassionate awareness is directed towards ourselves. Instead of standing apart from ourselves and pushing ourselves to be better or different, the goal of therapy is to make friends with who we are already."
To read more about Terry, visit her at
Terry maintains a private practice on Capitol Hill called Maitri Counseling Service. She focuses on skills to help people accept experiences, place them in a different context, develop greater clarity about personal values, and commit to needed behavior change.
"MAITRI is the Sanskrit word for “loving kindness” or “unconditional friendliness.” This is an attitude of compassion towards one’s experience. Maitri is a willingness to see what happens from one moment to the next and to let our experience be exactly as it is. Rather than trying to change what is, Maitri is dropping the struggle to be different from who and what we are."