(she/her)
New to Grow
I bring seven years of experience treating clients from a relational perspective. My goal from the time we meet is to connect with you as a human first and therapist second. This means I see you as an individual to build a relationship of trust and collaboration with, rather than as a list of problems to solve. As a trauma-informed therapist, I understand the importance of giving you agency over your treatment and life decisions. No one knows you better than you know yourself, so we set goals together, implement interventions at your pace, and maintain open communication throughout the process.
I typically open all of my sessions with some variation of this question: "What do you need from our time together today?" This question is an invitation to my clients to pause their busy lives and orient themselves to the present moment and set an intention for our session. During the first session, I will ask what brings you to therapy at this particular time, what hurts most in your life and how I can help, and what you hope the outcome of therapy will be for you. As a marriage and family therapist, I have studied how our family systems shape us, and so I will ask questions about your parents and as many generations before them that you can remember, as well as siblings, partners, children, etc. All topics are suggestions that are optional for you to answer or expand upon. You get to decide what you're looking for from this process and how you'd like to use our time together.
My greatest strength as a therapist is that I'm the same person with my friends and family as I am with my clients. I bring my warmth, authenticity, open-mindedness, and sense of humor to all my sessions, because first and foremost, I'm a human connecting with other humans. While my years of education, training, and experience have given me a skill set to offer to you, I firmly believe my clients know themselves best. My hope is that by being myself, I can help my clients feel more comfortable being themselves.
Adolescents and adults who have experienced trauma (developmental, sexual, physical, religious, etc.) and want to feel safe in their bodies and in their environments and learn to trust themselves and others again. Adolescents and adults who have eating disorders, disordered eating, and/or body image issues who want to find healthier ways of coping with emotions and communicating their needs, and are ready to improve their self-esteem. Adolescents and adults navigating grief due to loss such as death, separation, divorce, moving, abandonment, etc.. Families going through a traumatic event or life cycle change (e.g., death, college, divorce, remarriage, caring for elder parents, etc.) and in need of help navigating this change.
Acceptance and commitment (ACT)
I use exercises and interventions from acceptance and commitment therapy to help my clients identify their values and take action steps towards the life they want to live. ACT is also helpful for learning to live with all emotions- both positive and negative- rather than fighting or avoiding them, because what we resist persists.
Attachment-based
Attachment theory explains how our earliest relationships with our primary caregivers (parents, grandparents, etc.) determine how safe we feel getting close to people and how safe we feel being alone. When we are raised with an insecure attachment to our primary caregiver, we may feel overly dependent on others and afraid to be alone or afraid to depend on others and prefer going through life alone. Attachment-based therapy helps us understand your attachment style and work on creating secure relationships so that you can feel safer in connection to others as well as safe in your connection to yourself.
Dialectical Behavior (DBT)
Dialectical behavior therapy includes four core skill modules: mindfulness, emotion regulation, interpersonal effectiveness, and distress tolerance. I use DBT interventions to help clients build present-moment awareness, develop daily habits to maintain good mental health, get better at communicating with people, and learn to cope with uncomfortable emotions without acting impulsively or making a difficult situation worse.
EMDR
I'm trained in levels 1 & 2 of EMDR, which is eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy. EMDR is a protocol-based treatment for healing the mind and body from traumatic events.