New to Grow
Being unhappy can take you by surprise. Sometimes the cause of it seems clear, like a sudden break up or the death of someone close to you. Other times it’s harder to say. You might be in a relationship that no longer feels the way it once did. You may have moved to a new place or started a new job and find yourself unsettled. Or you may feel that everything is “going well,” yet still, for whatever reason, you just aren’t happy. If any of this sounds like you, I can help.I specialize in treating adults struggling with life transitions, dating and relationship problems, adhd and other neurodivergent experiences, and depression and loneliness. My background and style are in client centered, psychodynamic therapy, in which I can help you to work through both the imminent problems that brought you to therapy, as well as the sometimes more deeply hidden problems that precede and inform these present day problems. I have a decade of experience working in a number of clinical settings, and prior to that have a background in the humanities and philosophy. My own experience working through both psychological and philosophical questions informs my work with clients. I believe that therapy can be a great place to really work through your thoughts about your life, with the benefit of an outside participant who can listen with openness and curiosity.
In our first session together, here's what you can expect
If you haven't been in therapy before, or if it didn't go well for you, the first session in therapy can trigger a lot of anxiety. It's important to me that that first session be just that, a first attempt at getting to know one another. I do not have a pre-determined agenda, and all that I am looking to do is get a basic sense of what brought you here, what you expect from therapy, what you expect from me, and whether or not we will be a good fit together. All I ask is that you come as yourself, and I will do the same. Everything else will follow from there.
The biggest strengths that I bring into our sessions
I have always been curious. It was what led me to study philosophy and the humanities in college, and what led me to choose therapy as my career. And the invigorating thing about curiosity is that if you are led by curiosity, it simply doesn't leave you. Over the last 7 years, I've seen hundreds of clients in a number of different settings. And in all that time, I don't think that I've once felt bored or dreaded going into work. That has everything to do with my curiosity. It is something I bring to every single session, and it is a quality that I encourage and support in my clients as well; to be curious about their lives, feelings, and behavior. We all deserve a chance to know and remember that our lives are interesting and worth the attention and care of others, and I think more than any technique, modality, or specialty, that that is what I bring to the table that is most uniquely my own.
The clients I'm best positioned to serve
I often work best with people who feel stuck between what their life *should* feel like, and what it actually feels like. People who may have succeeded in one part of their life or another, but who nonetheless feel stuck. People struggling with executive functioning, and with generally getting their life together in the way they would like to, or the way they see others around them functioning or flourishing. I often work with people who struggle in romantic relationships, in dating, with their family, and with maintaining and establishing boundaries. While I am always willing to challenge people when they need it, I pride myself on being unusually non-judgmental, and I think therapy can be a deeply valuable space to explore your thoughts and feelings without being judged, and to be equally willing to soften that judgement towards yourself.
Psychodynamic
My primary style and approach is psycho-dynamic therapy. I think we all come to therapy with our own histories and associations, and a lot of what I want to do in therapy is work with my clients to identify and experience how the problems that brought them to therapy can be both understood and worked through by processing how they first emerged in ones own life. I also value psychodynamic therapy's capacity for ambiguity, which allows us to tolerate multiple strong emotions at the same time. We can feel love, admiration, and resentment for the same person, sometimes even at the same time, and psychodynamic therapy can give us the space and grace to feel those feelings. I also deeply value the emphasis that psychodynamic therapy puts on transference and countertransference. Because I am never going to have the exact same experiences as my clients, and because I will in most cases only ever meet my clients (and not their family members, significant others, or friends), and because I can only have a finite amount of specialized training throughout my life, I find it invaluable to be able to take in my own reaction to a client and my clients reaction to me, and explore the possibility that what I am feeling or they are feeling is, at least in part, telling me something important about who they are and what they are dealing with.
Motivational Interviewing
I have also been trained in Motivational interviewing, which both occurred at and was informed by spending 5 years in community mental health. What I really like about motivational interviewing is that it reminds me that however sophisticated my treatment might be, I have to start with where the client is, and their own willingness to change. I see therapy as an active and responsive process in which I am continually working with my clients to see how they are responding to me, how much they want to change, what they want to change, and how I can meet with them to facilitate that change.
Humanistic
While many of my clients come to me because of persistent and concrete problems, many of them are also affected by questions of meaning, or how to live lives in a way that feels full and purposeful. I draw on humanistic techniques (as well as my own background In philosophy) to make sure that I’m not only working through problems with my clients but working through why those problems matter to my clients, as well as what a good and meaningful life looks like.