• Mindful Awareness Compassion-Based Experiential Therapy.

  • Treat each moment as a fresh moment.

  • Everyone, and everything is connected.

  • Increase Awareness

  • The wound is the place where the light enters you.

  • You have everything you need inside to transform.

  • Uplift your spirt.

  • In reflection we investigate deeply.

  • Having the courage to dream again.

What is Confluent Therapy?

Confluent therapy is formed and informed by two streams of thoughts that enhance each other. We deepen the inner world and expand into the outer world through meditation, mindful awareness-compassion practices, and experiential therapy. We transform difficult and challenging emotions into wisdom and learn through connections.

One path uses meditation, mindfulness, and compassion practices. The other path is experiential therapy which explores our social, emotional, and interpersonal worlds. Both methods recognize what is happening in our bodies, thoughts, and emotions. In mediation, we learn to calm/quiet the mind and observe thoughts rather than get caught up in them. Mindful awareness invites whatever is present without fixing, judging, changing, or resisting.
A friendly curious attitude is developed to hold all aspects of ourselves with loving awareness. Experiential therapy provides an authentic, embodied enactment process that connects us to our internal and external world.

Our Mission

Our mission is to bring together mindful awareness practices with experiential therapy. Bridging the awareness of our inner and outer worlds: cultivate a life of fulfillment, connection, mindful awareness, and kindness in our daily lives.

Jaqueline Siroka, ACSW, TEP, BCD

A practicing psychotherapist for 50 years. I am a teacher, trainer, and educator in Psychodrama, Sociometry, and a Group Psychotherapist. I am a  Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Certified Meditation Teacher. I work at the intersection of mindful awareness and interpersonal connection facilitating relationship-oriented growth and healing.

The Possibilities of
Confluent Therapy:

  • Authentically encounter the moment without judgment.

  • Learn to identify your unfulfilled needs

  • Reduce reactivity

  • Increase capacity to hold emotional difficulties with compassion

  • Learn to accept your selves the way they are

  • Transform negative attitudes

  • Improve your interpersonal relationship

  • Live with connection, kindness, and awareness

How Do We Get There:

  • Meditation 

  • Slowing down

  • Pausing

  • Naming

  • Observation without judgment

“ Could a greater miracle take place, than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant.”
- Henry David Thoreau

Why Begin the Process?

  • Feeling anxious, and depressed

  • Experiencing disconnection and loneliness

  • Quick to temper

  • Feeling unworthy, and unloveable.

  • Being self-critical and judgemental

  • Blaming and resentful of others

  • Vigilant for what can go wrong

  • Discouraged by life

  • Noting reactivity 

  • Expression in and of the moment

  • Connecting with ourselves and others

  • Role Reversal

Offerings:

  • In therapy, we learn to recognize what is happening at the moment. We grow the capacity to allow what is happening to be present and experienced. If there is discomfort we learn to hold it with compassion.

    The process deepens by investigating situations, emotions (such as loneliness, anger, resentment, frustration confusion, and sorrow) thoughts, and the struggles that ensue when we want things to be different than they are. We learn to have compassion for our suffering. It is not our fault. Suffering is part of human existence. I value the courage and creativity that is inherent to finding one authentic voice. We create a safe environment for your authentic voice to be heard and understood. We notice the habits and conditioning that limit relationships and the capacity to love ourselves.
    In experiential therapy, we can not only talk about our difficulties, emotions, and thoughts, but we embody them through creative expression.

    “J.L Moreno M.D. believed the body remembers what the mind forgets”

  • Small group training is given twice a year. In the fall from mid-September through Mid-November with once-a-week meetings. In the Spring from mid- March through May. Integrating mindful awareness and compassion practices with individual therapy.

  • The participants will bring their clinical cases to be examined under the full lens of awareness and compassion practices. Integrating experiential therapies. We look at our own limitations as they impact our practice. The integration is to be present, and skillful when difficulties emerge in the treatment room.

"Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

— Victor E Frankl

Definitions of Mindful awareness and compassion practices and experiential therapies:

  • Compassion

    Is defined as the emotional response to another person’s pain or suffering, involving an authentic desire to help. It is similar but different from empathy because compassion also involves action.

  • Meditation

    A practice that teaches us to slow down, pause and quiet the mind's chatter. Meditation practices help us see things as they are.

  • Mindfulness

    Being in the present moment as it unfolds. Paying attention to what is inside, around, and between you in a non-judgemental nonreactive, and kind way.

  • Relational Mindfulness

    The use of relational mindfulness connects our internal life with our interpersonal world.

  • The Study of Interpersonal Relationships

    Helps us to gain knowledge about ourselves and our reactions in relationships. By studying our interpersonal relationships we develop strategies that help us become more skillful in our communication.

  • Active Investigation

    Based on the theory that creative expression has a healing effect on psychological problems. Action helps us expand and deepen our understanding of our lives.

  • Experiential Processes

    We have drawn from the Psychodramatic theories of how we grow and develop embodied enactment bringing the past and the future into the present.

Mindful Awareness
Compassion-Based
Experiential Therapy.

Testimonials from Professionals’:

  • Exceptional therapists are true healers. They transcend technique and method in what they do and how they do it. But then there is the rarest of all: The wisdom keeper—a teacher and trainer of the highest order. She not only knows what to do and when to do it—she knows why it works and how to help you grow. This is what you’ll find with Jacqui Siroka. A world-class therapist, healer, teacher, and trainer—but most of all, a wisdom keeper. She’ll teach you how to help others as she helps you become the best version of yourself. I know first-hand.

    Dan Tomasulo, Ph.D., MFA, TEP, MAPP Academic Director / Core Faculty Spirituality Mind Body Institute Teachers College, Columbia University, NYC, NY

  • “As we know, there is a wide spectrum in the quality of therapists and teachers of psychotherapy. However, it is always a great inspiration to find one of those rare beings that have achieved a level of true mastery in the field. They are committed to excellence and are dedicated to the achievement of the best possible outcomes for all the people who come to them. Jacqueline Siroka is such a practitioner. I have known her personally and professionally for over 40 years. Through the years, she has worked with both patients and students of mine. Her work is transformational. I have also sponsored her delivering training workshops at the University of California San Diego for Residents training in Psychiatry. All participants found that contact with her could be life-changing. Although it’s one thing to study experiential therapy based on mindful awareness and compassion, it’s truly a great thing to have a teacher that lives and embodies the work. We are truly fortunate to have her here for us.”

    Arthur Phillips, MD, Visiting Associate Professor of Psychiatric at the University of San Diego, Department of Psychiatry, San Diego, California. , Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association

  • “I refer clients to Jacqueline Siroka with great confidence and trust in her wisdom and compassion. She is a highly talented, skilled, and experienced psychotherapist, trainer, and consultant. “

    Tara Brach Ph.D. in clinical psychology and one of the leading teachers of Buddhist thinking and meditation in the Western world.

  • “The best teachers offer wisdom, compassion, and an inner radiance that comes only come from years of deep and dedicated practice.   Jacqui embodies all these qualities, offering a powerful blend of tools that can transform your life.”

    Jonathan Foust, co-founder, of Meditation Teacher Training Institute, senior teacher, and former president of Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health

  • As Rumi said, it is the loving kindness that heals and transforms, brings the perished to life, turns vinegar to wine, and copper to gold. This love is the fruit of wisdom, he noted, and only achieved through the bravery to look inside and embrace. Jacqueline Siroka's work masterfully brings these delicate concepts together which allows a new perspective to experiential therapy—to become aware of our thoughts, feelings, sufferings, and the monsters inside—to mindfully breath through them, dance with them, accept them and offer them an inclusive loving kindness that makes an individual whole, with themselves and with the universe. Jacqueline Siroka is a superb therapist and an excellent guide for this transformational journey. I was fortunate to experience this approach working with her over the past year. Our work together has greatly influenced my personal and professional development and will be an inspiring guide in my work with my patients and students.

    Aryan Fotros MD, MSc
    Assistant Professor of Psychiatry
    Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, Warren Alpert Medical
    School of Brown University
    Providence, RI