Licensed to practice in 2 states and accepts 10 insurances. Specializes in Anxiety, Depression, Life Transitions and 9 more.
New to Grow
Great to meet you! I want you to know that when you come into therapy with me, you don’t have to pretend, minimize, or hold everything together. You get to show up exactly as you are — we take it from there together. My favorite part of this work has always been sitting with people one‐on‐one. That’s where real connection and real healing happen. I genuinely enjoy getting to know who you are, what you’ve been carrying, and what you’re hoping might feel different. My style is warm, steady, and honest. I listen closely, ask thoughtful questions, and help you understand the experiences and patterns that are shaping your life. I’m also practical — I like to offer tools and strategies you can actually use in your day‐to‐day life, not just in the therapy room. I work with people dealing with anxiety, stress, depression, trauma, relationship challenges, major transitions, and substance use concerns. Something I tell clients often is this: I don’t want you to just feel better — I want you to be well. Feeling better can be temporary. Being well means building insight, healing, and lasting change. When you work with me, you get someone who shows up fully — present, steady, honest, and genuinely invested in your well‐being. I’m not here to give you quick fixes or surface‐level advice. I’m here to help you understand yourself more deeply, heal what’s been ignored or pushed aside, and build a life that feels more grounded and true to who you are. My style is warm, direct, and deeply human. I listen for the things underneath your words — the patterns, the pain points, the strengths you might not yet see. I’ll challenge you gently, support you consistently, and help you make sense of what’s been getting in the way.
During your first session, we’ll talk about what brings you in, what’s been weighing on you, and what you’d like to see change. I’ll ask thoughtful questions to help us build a shared understanding and to get a clear picture of what support will be most helpful for you. I also use screening tools and assessments in early sessions. These aren’t tests you can “pass” or “fail” — they’re simply tools that help us better understand your symptoms, experiences, and needs so we can create a plan that actually fits you. By the end of our first session, we’ll have: A sense of what’s been happening in your life; a shared understanding of your goals and a beginning plan for how we’ll work together. My intention is that you leave feeling a little more grounded, a little more understood, and reassured that you don’t have to do this alone. I’ll be right there with you as we move at a pace that feels safe and manageable.
One of the things I bring to my work is a strong belief that insight is important, but insight alone isn't always enough. We can understand where a pattern came from and still find ourselves repeating it. My job is to help you connect the dots between your thoughts, emotions, behaviors, relationships, and past experiences, while also giving you concrete tools to create something different in the present. I draw heavily from evidence-based approaches, particularly CBT and other skills-based and trauma-informed approaches, but I don't believe therapy should feel like following a textbook. I tailor the work to the person sitting in front of me. Sometimes that means challenging an unhelpful thought. Sometimes it means learning to tolerate an emotion instead of avoiding it. Sometimes it means setting a boundary, changing a behavior, practicing a new response, processing something painful from the past, or simply learning how to stop fighting yourself. I also believe that you should be able to be honest in therapy—even when the truth isn't particularly flattering. You don't need to present the polished version of yourself here. You don't need to have the right words or know exactly what you need. We can be curious about the parts of you that feel confusing, frustrating, contradictory, or difficult to understand without judgment. What may be somewhat different about working with me is that I am comfortable balancing compassion with accountability. I will work hard to understand your experience and why you've developed the ways of coping that you have. At the same time, I won't simply reinforce patterns that are keeping you stuck. If something isn't working, we'll look at it honestly and figure out what might need to change. I also bring significant experience working with anxiety, depression, trauma, relationship difficulties, perfectionism, emotional regulation, life transitions, and patterns of avoidance or coping that may have helped you survive at one point but are no longer serving you. My goal isn't to change who you are. It's to help you have more freedom in how you respond to your life. You don't have to come to therapy with everything figured out. You just need to be willing to be curious, honest, and open to trying something different. If you're looking for a therapist who will listen deeply, help you understand yourself, challenge you when it's useful, and work with you to turn insight into meaningful change, I’d be glad to see whether we’re a go
The high-functioning but overwhelmed client. They may be successful at work, parenting, relationships, or managing responsibilities, but internally they're anxious, exhausted, irritable, disconnected, or constantly “on.” Other people may not realize how much they're struggling. The client who has insight but is still stuck. They can often tell you why they do what they do. They may have read the books, listened to podcasts, or had therapy before. They understand their childhood, their triggers, or their patterns—but understanding hasn't necessarily translated into behaving differently. This is an especially good fit for your approach because you naturally move from “Why am I like this?” to “What do I do with this now?” The overthinker. They analyze conversations, relationships, decisions, mistakes, and future possibilities. They have difficulty shutting their brain off and may struggle with uncertainty, control, perfectionism, or needing things to feel “right” before they can move forward. The person whose coping strategies have stopped working. Avoidance, staying busy, controlling circumstances, shutting down emotionally, people-pleasing, anger, substances, overworking, or withdrawing may have helped them cope at one point. Now those strategies are creating problems in their relationships, work, or sense of self. The client struggling in relationships. They may repeatedly find themselves in the same interpersonal patterns—difficulty communicating needs, establishing boundaries, tolerating vulnerability, managing anger, trusting others, or letting go of control. They genuinely want healthier relationships but don't always know how to create them. Anxiety, chronic worry, and overthinking Perfectionism and control Emotional avoidance or difficulty identifying/expressing emotions Relationship and communication difficulties Boundaries and people-pleasing Life transitions and feeling “stuck” Trauma and the ways past experiences continue to influence the present Depression that manifests as withdrawal, hopelessness, or loss of momentum Emotional regulation and anger/frustration Clients who intellectually understand their problems but struggle to change the pattern
I take a client-centered approach to faith, meaning I follow the client's beliefs, values, and comfort level. We might explore how faith influences the way they understand themselves, their relationships, suffering, forgiveness, purpose, hope, or difficult life experiences. For some clients, faith may provide a meaningful source of support and grounding. For others, it may be an area of struggle, doubt, anger, guilt, or conflict—and those experiences are equally welcome in therapy. I don't see therapy as a place where I tell clients what they should believe. Instead, I help clients explore the relationship between their beliefs and their emotional well-being, including situations where faith may be providing comfort as well as situations where religious expectations, shame, guilt, or internal conflict may be contributing to distress. When appropriate and desired by the client, faith can also be incorporated into coping and treatment through prayer, spiritual reflection, scripture or other religious texts, values exploration, forgiveness work, gratitude, meaning-making, and connection with supportive faith communities. These are incorporated because they are meaningful to the client—not because they are imposed by the therapist. Ultimately, my goal is to create a space where clients don't have to compartmentalize important parts of who they are. If faith is part of your life, it can be part of the conversation. If you're questioning your faith, struggling with it, or unsure what you believe, that belongs in the conversation too.
I use Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) as one of the primary frameworks in my work, but I don't approach it as a rigid set of worksheets or techniques. I use CBT to help clients understand the connection between their thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and physical responses and identify the patterns that keep them feeling stuck. A lot of clients know they are anxious, overwhelmed, depressed, or frustrated, but they don't always recognize what happens between the situation and the reaction. Together, we slow that process down and look at what you're telling yourself, what you're feeling, what you're doing in response, and whether that response is actually helping. I use CBT to help clients: Identify and challenge unhelpful thinking patterns Reduce rumination, worry, and catastrophic thinking Recognize perfectionistic or all-or-nothing thinking Develop more balanced and realistic perspectives Understand emotional and behavioral patterns Change avoidance and other coping behaviors that reinforce anxiety Build healthier responses to difficult emotions Practice new behaviors rather than simply talking about change Develop practical skills that can be used outside of therapy One of the things I particularly value about CBT is that we don't stop at insight. If we identify that avoidance is maintaining your anxiety, for example, we'll work toward gradually facing what you've been avoiding. If we recognize that a particular belief is contributing to relationship problems, we'll examine that belief and experiment with responding differently. I also believe CBT works best when it is individualized and collaborative. You are the expert on your own experience. My role is to help you become more aware of your patterns, ask questions that may help you see things differently, and work with you to develop strategies that actually fit your life. The goal isn't to make you think positively all the time. It's to help you develop a more flexible, accurate, and compassionate way of thinking so that your thoughts and emotions have less control over your choices.
I use Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) when clients are experiencing ongoing difficulties related to trauma and are ready to work directly with the ways a traumatic experience has affected their thoughts, emotions, and beliefs. CPT is particularly helpful when trauma has changed the way you see yourself, other people, or the world. After trauma, people can develop beliefs such as “I should have done something differently,” “I can't trust anyone,” “I'm not safe,” or “There is something wrong with me.” These beliefs can feel completely true, even when they developed as a way of making sense of something overwhelming. In CPT, we work collaboratively to identify these “stuck points” and examine whether the conclusions you've drawn from the trauma are still serving you. The goal isn't to minimize what happened or convince you that it wasn't serious. Instead, we work toward developing a more balanced understanding of what happened and reducing the emotional power that trauma-related beliefs continue to have. CPT may involve: Identifying trauma-related thoughts and beliefs Understanding how trauma has affected your emotions and behavior Identifying “stuck points” that keep you feeling trapped in the past Examining beliefs related to safety, trust, power/control, esteem, intimacy, and responsibility Challenging hindsight bias, self-blame, and unrealistic responsibility Learning to distinguish between what happened then and what is happening now Developing more flexible and accurate ways of interpreting yourself and your experiences Gradually approaching difficult thoughts rather than continuing to avoid them One aspect of CPT that fits closely with how I practice is that I don't want clients to simply understand their trauma—I want them to have more freedom from it. We work at a pace that respects your experience while also recognizing that avoidance can sometimes keep trauma symptoms going.
Supportive therapy is at the heart of how I work with clients. I believe that meaningful therapy requires more than techniques—it requires a therapeutic relationship where you feel genuinely heard, understood, respected, and safe enough to be honest. Supportive therapy provides space to process what you're experiencing while strengthening your ability to cope with life's challenges. Sometimes you need to work through a specific problem; other times, you need someone to help you slow down, make sense of what is happening, and find your footing before you're ready to make bigger changes. In our work together, I may help you: Process difficult emotions and experiences without judgment Identify and build on your existing strengths and resilience Develop healthier coping strategies Navigate stressful life transitions and difficult circumstances Increase confidence in your ability to manage challenges Gain perspective when emotions make it difficult to see clearly Identify patterns that may be contributing to distress Feel less alone while working through something difficult Develop greater self-compassion and emotional awareness Being supportive doesn't mean simply agreeing with everything you say. I believe genuine support includes honesty, curiosity, and sometimes gentle challenge. I can validate that something is painful while also helping you consider whether the way you're responding is actually helping you. I also recognize that not every session needs to be about fixing something. Sometimes the most therapeutic thing is having a place where you don't have to hold everything together—where you can say what you're really thinking, organize your thoughts, and leave feeling a little more grounded.
I use Motivational Interviewing (MI) when clients feel ambivalent about change—when part of you wants something to be different, while another part of you isn't quite ready, doesn't know how, or isn't sure the change is worth it. I don't believe people change because someone tells them they should. Sustainable change is much more likely when it comes from your own values, reasons, and sense of readiness. MI helps us explore questions such as: What do you want to be different? What is keeping you from making that change? What are you getting from the pattern you're currently in? What is it costing you? What matters most to you? What would change make possible in your life? How ready are you to do something differently? What is one realistic step you are willing to take? A central part of MI is exploring ambivalence without judgment. For example, you may know that a behavior is creating problems but also recognize that it serves an important purpose for you. Rather than telling you to simply stop, we'll explore both sides of that conflict and work toward understanding what you actually want. I use MI particularly when clients are struggling with behavior change, avoidance, substance use, relationship patterns, lifestyle changes, or feeling stuck between knowing they want something different and not feeling ready to act. MI also fits naturally with my broader approach because I don't want therapy to become a place where I'm telling you what to do and you're trying to convince me why you can't. Instead, we're working together to understand what matters to you and what might help you move toward it. You don't have to be completely ready for change before coming to therapy. Ambivalence is part of the process. We can start wherever you are and work from there. My role isn't to push you into change. It's to help you discover your own reasons for change—and build the confidence and motivation to act on them.