I provide support to individuals who are going through transitions, life changes, and dealing with ongoing emotional struggles. I specialize in supporting people with anxiety, low self esteem and those with trauma backgrounds. I enjoy getting to know my clients, and helping them to see their strengths and know themselves better. I use depth focused approaches as well as providing supportive symptom reduction tools and interventions. My passion is using creative modalities in my work to help clients access the non-verbal pieces of emotion, which accelerates self understanding and healing. I graduated from California Institute of Integral Studies with a Masters in Counseling Psychology, and have done extensive training in Person-Centered Expressive Arts. My clinical background includes focus on community based mental health, family and child therapy, grief and loss, and complex trauma. I currently work in private practice and also as a supervisor at a community based mental health agency.
What can clients expect to take away from sessions with you?
Clients can expect to come away from sessions with me with tools to practice, a little more hope, and having laughed at least once!
What treatment methods and tools do you utilize?
I used Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and tools that come from that approach, are based on noticing, monitoring and changing thought patterns, through systematic interventions. Somatic approaches and mindfulness are tools I use frequently. Person-Centered Expressive Arts in session may look like: creating a metaphoric language that increases understanding, or using writing, sound, movement, and visual art to deepen your experience. Mindfulness (not just meditation) and somatic awareness tools serve as ways to slow down and remember the self, and to own your time and space, rather than operating on auto-pilot. I also Internal Family Systems, Attachment, Narrative, and view client's struggles as integrated with their contexts, with a feminist, multi-cultural and community care lens.
Explain to clients what areas you feel are your biggest strengths.
I best support anxious, high functioning individuals who are taking on too much in life, have a strong inner critic, and a deep emotional life. I help them to rewrite their deeply help beliefs and build structures and practices to support their growth and healing.