Welcome! My name is Katherine. I am 66 yrs old. I am married to my best friend who I have been with for about a decade. I have 2 biologic children I raised mainly as a single mom, and some non-biological children who adopted me along the way. I am a survivor of child abuse and a very aggressive blood cancer. I read a lot. I write a little. I use some Chinese and Native American wellness techniques for myself and sometimes suggest them to clients. I dabble in several things I am not very good at but enjoy. I love hiking and the outdoors and almost anything to do with biology or culture. My friends tell me I am very compassionate - which I think comes from working through your own trauma. I have been a independent licensed clinical social worker for 40 yrs, and I have supervised and trained quite a few therapists and other health/mental health providers. I have a 2nd masters degree and over 10 yrs experience in nursing. I have had some unusual opportunities compared to my friends and collegues - observing civil rights trainings as a child, living with political refugees as a teen, teaching and travelling abroad - I spent 3 yrs in my 50s living in North Africa as a Peace Corps volunteer. I have a special affinity for veterans and other trauma survivors. I recently retired from nursing but keep a small online therapy practice with my first and deepest career love of psychiatric social work.
In our first session together, here's what you can expect
Our first session will be different than the others. Depending on the information you provide in advance, we may well spend the entire first session and maybe even part of the second just identifying your primary concerns, setting goals, planning a course of action, and answering any questions you have about my treatment recommendation . Or we may start therapy in that first session, doing a deeper dive into how you think different issues are related and how you envision therapy touching many aspects of your life.
The biggest strengths that I bring into our sessions
1. Because I have worked as a mental health professional for a long time, I have had the opportunity to develop expertise with many therapeutic methods and can craft my treatment approaches to your specific needs and, often, preferences. 2. Because I have worked through my own childhood trauma, my empathy for you is based on more than just clinical understanding, and my belief in you is based on more that just successful results with others. I know how awful and hopeless it feels to see no good way out and how amazing and joyful it is to look back from a place of wellness. 3. My travel and work with people of many cultures has provided me with many helpful mental tools from these other cultures that I can share with clients. 4. Finally, from my direct experience in medical health (both as a masters level nurse for a decade and as a very ill cancer patient for several months), I have a level of insight beyond the average therapist as to how the body and the mind work so closely affect each other and how to mental health interventions to lessen physical pain and improve mobility and how to use breath work and physical relaxation and movement to improve thoughts, emotions and behaviors.
The clients I'm best positioned to serve
I actually have two ideal clients who, on the surface, may sound very different but who, on a deeper level, are quite similar: 1. The first client is someone who is doing fine, but finds themselves asking "Is this it? Is this all I can expect from my life? Is this all I have to give to it?" And this person has a growing suspicion that the emptiness and lack of meaning they are sometimes feeling are messages from down deep that are asking to be heard - a talent or gift that is just waiting to be used, a passion or life purpose that is ready to be embraced, an unfulfilled dream that could still be realized. 2. My second ideal client comes to me in crisis. They're ability to cope as normal has been overwhelmed. They are lost and have no idea how to get home. They may be almost without hope that their lives will ever get better. Both ideal clients are ready for something very different. The first because they have outgrown their former level of coping and second because it no longer exists for them. Often the crises in our lives come from deep longing. The message comes out more demanding and despairing but the underlying force is the same. Often my second ideal client, once they have gotten some real relief, decide they do not want to go back to just being ok, they know where that eventually led, and they know they now have a unique opportunity, before the concrete resets, to continue their forward journey armed with their new coping skills into something better.
Eclectic
Eclectic therapy is different from all other treatment methods. All other therapies attempt to fit the client into a specific treatment method. Only eclectic therapy attempts to fit treatment methods to the client. Eclectic therapy recognizes that the client is much more than their diagnoses or a single intervention formula. The eclectic therapist values each person's uniqueness, their individual strengths and needs, hopes and fears, preferences and goals. And it blends and adapts methods and interventions based on the client's uniqueness to craft an individualized treatemnt plan. I have practiced electic therapy for 30+ years. Below I am listing some of the treatment methods and interventions that have helped many clients in some aspect of treatment. But there is no combination that fits every client for everything so it is just a list.
Psychoeducation
I've been using some form of psycho-education for about 10 years to help many clients understand their problems and symptoms. One of the biggest problems for most of us, myself included, is that we don't fully understand our problem. Why do we feel the way we feel? Why do we keep repeating behaviors that harm us? Why do we let go of dreams? Why can we not achieve our goalsPsycho-education often gives us that missing information. Depending on the issues we learn about their origin in our brain chemistry, their mind-body connection, their evolution from perfectly good coping skills when we were younger that do not serve us well anymore, we can undertand why we freeze when we want to act and act when we know that is not a good idea, why we feel so quickly and intensely about some people or situations and are almost unaware of others... Whatever the struggle, understanding brings freedom and we it is very hard to change something, especially long term, when we do not first understand it.
Trauma Informed Care
I have been doing Trauma Informed Care for 25 years. For complicated trauma that has its roots in a very a confusing or frightening set of events in childhood, attachment theory or internal family systems can be very helpful in understanding and identifying how past trauma is affecting the present. For trauma expressed as a phobia, exposure therapy and exposure response prevention can help manage or even eliminate the phobia. Interventions from cognitive processing or cognitive behavioral thera py can help the client change thoughts, feelings and beliefs about the trauma and that can be used to change related choices and behavior patterns. Tapping, EMDR and Brainspotting techniques reconnect the more instinctive and reactive part of the brain to the more cognitive and analytic part of the brain. The trauma memory that has been trapped in the highly reactive survival brain where it has continued to create a fight/flight/freeze response even though there is no real present dangeris now able to move over to the analytic and integrative part of the brain that simply stores it as a past memory with little or no power to affect us in our present or our future. If the trauma response includes high anxiety or panic attacks, mind-body techniques can be very helpful in managing or eliminating severe anxiety and panic attacks. These include polyvagal stimulation, awareness exercises, self reassurance and commands, deep breathing, imagery, and full body relaxation. I offer gentle exposure or exposure response prevention for clients struggling with a phobia or increasing self-imposed isolation. Some clients are interested in mindfulness or play therapy to build tolerance. I do not provide these but often invite a client to try another tolerance building activity such as yoga, meditation, qi gong, dance, music and art.
Jungian
I sometimes use Jungian techniques that tap into the subconscious to accelerate self-understanding and growth. These include dreamwork, active imagination, and/or exploring feelings and images evoked during a session. Occassionally, clients will come to me (not because they need relief but) because they want to fulfill some lifelong passion, or untapped potential. Some clients (after getting relief and achieving their initial therapy objectives) want to continue therapy toward a larger goal. These clients who are focused on self-exploration and self-growth often choose a Jungian or similar psychodynamic approach.
Psychodynamic
I have used some version of Psychodynamic Theory (including Ego Psychology and Jungian Theory) throughout my 30+ year career to help me conceptualize what is going on beneath the client's conscious awareness. And to help me use this understanding of the unconscious - its drives, desires and beliefs - to help my clients understand how they get stuck and how to get unstuck, to help clients see what stage of development needs more attention, to help them balance and fully integrate unconcious needs with the concious mind. The end goal of this work is always to replace lower level defenses, maladaptive behaviors, and unhealthy coping skills with ones that are more functional, more adaptive and more resilient.
2 ratings with written reviews
October 21, 2025
For my first session, Katherine made me feel at ease and comfortable. I feel she truly cares about me. I’m really looking forward to working with her.
October 21, 2025
Katherine is a warm, empathetic active listener, and wise. Her intuition in the moment to push or challenge vs affirm is spot on every time. After negative experiences with therapists in the past she couldn’t be more different- so glad to have connected and grateful for her voice along this journey.