Individual Therapy

My goal as a therapist is to help you create meaningful change and live a more fulfilling life. I provide a safe, nonjudgmental space to facilitate self discovery, curiosity, self compassion and understanding. I work collaboratively with you to explore and identify unhelpful patterns that create roadblocks to your happiness and equip you with helpful tools that you can use every day. Additionally, we’ll work together to set realistic and reachable goals to move closer to the life that you want.

I tailor treatment to each individual, using an integrative approach to therapy. I use traditional talk therapy such as insight oriented interventions (exploring family relationships, making connections, building insight into relational patterns), as well as evidence-based treatments including emotion focused/experiential interventions and trauma informed interventions.

Process of Therapy

Treatment typically begins with an initial consultation (about an hour long) where I gather pertinent information including: what brings you to therapy, history of your presenting problem, important relationships in your life, mental/physical health history, and goals that you would like to meet. Additionally, I explore any questions or concerns that you may have about the therapy process. Following this consultation, I offer feedback and recommendations and we can develop a treatment plan that addresses your specific presenting concerns. The initial phase of treatment focuses on building a trusting therapeutic relationship, gathering information and beginning to build insight into what may be contributing to your presenting problem/s. Additional initial goals may involve skill building and learning tools to support you in alleviating distress and any symptoms that are interfering in your every day functioning. This is also an important time to evaluate if I am the right therapist for you. We will work together to determine if I could help you reach your therapeutic goals.

The therapeutic process takes time and can be a different experience for everyone. Since therapy involves discussing sensitive information and experiences, sessions often bring up difficult emotions. This is a normal part of the process, and an important part of therapy is discussing these difficult emotions with me in treatment. I am here to support you and work through any concerns that you may have about your specific therapy experience.

Child and Teen Therapy

In addition to talk therapy and cognitive behavioral methods, I use creative arts and play interventions as avenues to help children identify and express feelings as well as process and work through internal conflicts, challenges and trauma. I work alongside parents to facilitate progress and believe ongoing, active parent/caregiver involvement is critical to therapy success.

Child Therapy Process

Child/Teen therapy typically begins with an initial consultation where I meet with parents/caregivers and gather information related to your child’s presenting concerns. I will ask you questions about your child’s development, mental and physical health history, family history and school/social functioning. Additionally, it will be important for me to meet with your child during this initial consultation. I tailor treatment to you and your child’s specific needs and therefore, the early phase of treatment will involve assessing what those needs are through individual sessions with your child and parent collateral sessions where we work together to come up with a treatment plan.

Parent Support and Co-parenting

Parenting can be the hardest and most meaningful journey in one’s life. I offer parenting sessions to help individuals develop more successful and connected relationships with their children. Parenting sessions involve building greater understanding of the barriers that get in the way of successful parenting, such as conflicts in communication. I work closely with parents to help them tune into their own emotions, explore and understand patterns from their families of origin, and help them access their inner strengths and core values. Parent sessions may involve the following:

  • positive discipline (a discipline approach that teaches parents to be both kind and firm; we explore beliefs underlying child behaviors, teach problem solving skills, effective communication and mutual respect)

  • behavioral management strategies (we work together to identify specific challenging behaviors and develop a behavioral plan to address them. We discuss and work on responding vs. reacting to child problem behavior, understanding the intention, meaning, feelings behind the behaviors, as well as modeling and asserting clear rules and expectations)

  • exploring and working through family dynamics contributing to conflicts in communication

  • building confidence as a parent

  • Addressing concerns about your child’s learning and identifying needs for services/supports in school or in the community.

In addition to the objectives indicated above, Co-parenting sessions involve exploring and working through barriers in parent to parent communication, creating the space for understanding of one another's core parental values and goals for parenting.

Couples Therapy

As a couples therapist, my goal is to help couples repair emotional bonds, heal past wounds and re-connect in loving and honest ways. I work collaboratively with couples to understand and work through negative cycles in their relationship to help them gain more awareness and compassion for themselves and their partners to have have long lasting connection and emotional safety. I support couples with transition into parenthood, emotional distance, navigating major life transitions and stressors, escalating conflicts, and infidelity.

The therapy process begins with my meeting with the couple together for an initial consultation, where I will inquire about the history of the relationship and other pertinent information. I will explain the process of couples therapy and how I work. Following the initial meeting, I will meet with each partner individually for one session to gather personal histories, followed by sessions with the couple together again. My approach is experiential, which means, I focus on understanding and repairing emotions as well as making connections in the here and now in addition to past histories and experiences.