Specialties
Couples
As a marriage and family therapist, I am experienced and specialized in working with couples. I counsel couples in marriages, partnerships, and relationships (LGBTQ+ identified and cisgender, heterosexual identified) on issues of communication practices, infidelity, parenthood, and resentment. I work with you to strengthen your communication, heal historical wounds, and break free from the dynamics and negative patterns that ensnare you. I support couples who are dealing with the heartbreak of loss, infidelity, trust breaches, and sexual problems. I support parents as you grieve the changes in your relationship post-children, support you as a couple to reckon with division of labor and develop unified parenting practices. I am an active and engaged couples counselor. I encourage couples to draw on your strengths and be accountable for individual contributions to problems. I will slow down conversations and reactions in order to interrupt and illuminate patterns of argument and misunderstanding. This work will help you clarify what you want from one another and how to ask for it directly. Through couples counseling you will have an opportunity to reconnect, understand each other more deeply, and develop tools to move through conflict.
Anxiety & Depression
I work with clients to disempower anxiety and depression. I am a non-judgemental, compassionate force of curiosity to help you identify the ways that anxiety or depression is operating on you and compromising your wellbeing. By understanding how these forces operate and developing tools to disempower them, we will create tangible steps to move toward joy, fulfillment, and peace. Anxiety and depression don’t simply come from within you--there are societal, social, and cultural forces that can make you feel lost, small, not good enough, or scared. I will help you separate these influences and create a space for you to take a stand.
I also work with individuals on supporting their understanding of their values, hopes, preferences, and goals. Together we can recognize your obstacles and clarify your principles on how you want to show up in the world, with yourself, in your work, and in your relationships.
Chronic Pain
I work with clients who are experiencing chronic, non-structural pain. Chronic pain can be debilitating and take away your agency to participate in work, physical activity, relationships, and family life. Mindbody pain is often incredibly frustrating, without clear answers or solutions from the medical community, and difficult to treat outside of therapy.
I gained extensive clinical training and valuable experience at the Pain Psychology Center in Beverly Hills. I support you in working through the habits, behaviors, and underlying psychological complexities that are holding your body hostage. Together, we find active ways to decrease or eradicate sensations and symptoms. By exploring the neural pathways in the brain, tracking the influences behind pain levels, utilizing mindfulness, and exploring historical trauma and emotional content, you can experience physical and emotional healing.
Mothers
I love to work with mothers at all ages and stages around the emotions, challenges, and hard work of parenting. Becoming a mother stretches you in new ways, and can bring up feelings of anxiety and worry, pushing an often painful examination and reckoning with your own childhood and your relationships with caregivers. New motherhood also provides an opportunity to define your values and practices for how you parent. Therapy helps mothers through birth trauma, postpartum depression and anxiety, and provides a space for you to explore the challenges and joys of motherhood. Counseling during this transitional time offers an exploration of your evolving identity and helps you navigate your changing needs, wants, and relational dynamics.
I also work with seasoned mothers. Each new developmental stage for a child is also an adjustment for you as a parent. Often mothers find themselves needing some additional emotional support, particularly if you are parenting a child who is highly sensitive or has special needs. I have also worked with many mothers who need help navigating their teenager’s behavioral changes. As a mother of a teen, you might benefit from working through the emotional adjustment of differences in closeness, balancing limit-setting with developmentally appropriate expansion of freedoms, and defiant behaviors.
More generally, you may find yourself feeling depleted, experiencing higher levels of anger and reactivity, or struggling with misalignment with your spouse over parenting practices, domestic labor, or pandemic fatigue. Mothers are often under-supported, and counseling is a wonderful opportunity to carve out a space for self-care, reflection, and resources.
LGBTQ+
I appreciate working with clients of all sexual orientations, gender identities, and gender expression. I have experience and specialization in working with LGBTQ+ couples and families. I also appreciate my work with clients, both adults and teens, who are in the process of exploring, understanding, or identifying sexual orientation or gender identities.
Teens
The adolescent years are full of growth and emotional maturation. These changes can bring higher levels of stress, emotional volatility, self-esteem struggles, and worry. I provide a space for teens that is warm and accepting. It is crucial for teens to have a safe environment to explore complex feelings, relational challenges, social and academic concerns, identity, and shame. Therapy offers an opportunity to explore these struggles in order to shed light, gain perspective, and have concrete tools and strategies to move through problems.
