(she/her)
Hello there! I am a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) based in California. I received my bachelors from Emory University and my masters from Pepperdine University and have been practicing for 19 years. I help clients struggling with identifying thoughts and feelings, emotional regulation, communication skills to feel heard/understood and respected, build healthy self-esteem and coping skills they tend to share with others.
In our first session together, we’ll start with brief introductions, gather some history, and then we can start collaborating on specific goals to achieve together. Goals are amended at times and on-going but help focus the treatment to set you up for successful graduation.
Having practiced for almost 20 years, I’ve developed great empathy, appreciation for others, learned not just in continuing education but from previous clients to be able to identify root of difficulties and provide coping and communication tools in order to work through and prosper to contentment with yourself and life.
I love working with teens/adults that have a desire to improve thoughts and feelings through better communication and coping skills.
Dialectical Behavior (DBT)
I found DBT is beneficial for most issues as it helps identify feelings, promotes emotional regulation, builds tolerance and resilience, and better way to respond versus react when communicating to be and feel heard.
Cognitive Behavioral (CBT)
I found CBT is the foundation of all mental health treatments. Easiest example, is reframing self-talk such as A (upsetting event which is outside our control) to B (narrative we tell ourselves) to C (emotional consequence). CBT teaches we have control of our emotional outcomes via reframing negative self-talk.
Couples Counseling
I have found great enjoyment in helping couples work through understanding each other, fight-fairly, learn intent vs impact, improve communication skills to feels heard/understood and pull from Gottman practices but meet the couple where their at and build/choose techniques based on that.
Grief Therapy
I have been practice as a grief therapist since my father passed in 2013. I will help support a safe environment to process grief, help identify the trauma attached to grief, and how to heal with honoring and create meaning. David Kessler's work, "all trauma doesn't have grief, but all grief does have trauma".
Solution Focused Brief Treatment
I have had a lot of success using SFBT in my practice. In this treatment, well set is where specific goals you want to achieve and although we will pull from childhood/past experience, this practice is successful in keeping people motivated and moving forward to a point where they graduate from therapy.