Licensed to practice in Colorado and accepts 9 insurances. Specializes in Trauma and PTSD, Addiction / Substance Use, Childhood / Intergenerational Trauma and 7 more.
(they/them)
New to Grow
Are you looking for a queer/trans therapist you don't have to re-explain your queerness to? That's me. Are you looking for a therapist to help you work through problems or trauma that feel stuck and just won't budge? I can help! I’m a talk therapist who specializes in working with queer and trans folks on trauma, depression, anxiety, and substance use. I primarily work with people on trauma/PTSD, substance use/abuse, gender and sexuality topics (e.g. gender dysphoria), internalized oppression, depression/anxiety, neurospiciness, and relationships of all types (family, partner(s), friends). I am trained in EMDR, a type of specialty therapy for trauma and other issues that feel “stuck”. I am also certified in addiction counseling. I focus on long-term depth-based psychotherapy, so my style works best for people ready to start (or start thinking about) working on long-term issues, behavioral or thought patterns, and/or trauma that is affecting their lives. I can help you break through the stuck-ness you feel with persistent problems in your life and support you in unlearning the damaging things people and society have taught you to think about yourself. You’ve got this, and I can be right here with you along the way.
A first session is generally for us to get to know each other. I'll provide some information about how I run my practice and privacy laws that I adhere to, then I'll gather some information about what brings you to therapy, as well as background information to help support us in figuring out where we want to start in therapy.
My approach tends to be laid-back, warm, and accepting. I work to support you in improving your relationship with yourself and others. By collaborating with you to find the balance between support and challenge in the therapeutic relationship, I find that we can work together to build trust, foster interpersonal skills, and establish a new narrative about relationships that’s transferable to your day-to-day life. My work is liberation-focused, anti-oppressive, and collaborative, with a focus on harm reduction. Much of my practice focuses on the way that systems interact with our lives and I have found that Narrative Therapy-style or Internal Family System-style unblending of systemic forces on a mezzo (e.g. parents’ voices, trauma) and macro levels (e.g. internalized transphobia, racism, capitalism etc.) is a valuable tool to clarify what your values are and support changes that allow you to make choices that better align with your truest self. I also am trained in Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), an evidence-based treatment for trauma, which I find most helpful when something is really “stuck” in your life in order to get it unstuck and finally actually healing. I work hard to be inclusive of gender expansive, queer, neurospicy, and all marginalized people’s complex and nuanced intersecting identities in order to help you feel accepted and safe enough to break down the ways that oppression and discrimination affect our lives; This includes a commitment to being antiracist and anti-ableist. I am kink, asexuality, polyamory/ENM, and furry/therian friendly.
My ideal client is a trans or queer person who is ready to dig into (or is considering digging into) the longterm work of healing from deeply ingrained patterns and/or trauma. Your concerns might be childhood trauma, relationship trauma or problems including intimate partner violence, gender identity ambivalence (questions like "am I trans?" or "how do I gain confidence to transition?"), gender dysphoria, experiences of oppression (e.g. homophobia, transphobia, racism, ableism), substance use/abuse or addiction (I can help you get your substance use to look how you want it to which doesn't always mean 100% sober for every person), depression, or anxiety. No matter what, I'm here to support you in feeling ready enough and safe enough to tackle those long-term problems.
All of the work that I do is gender-affirming. I lean on curiosity with anyone who isn't sure of their gender yet, and both easily and happily use new names, pronouns, and gendered terms to help every client feel seen and affirmed while working with me. This also can include my help with figuring out gender if you're unsure how you identify, helping you navigate any shifts in gender identity that come along, supporting you in coping with and combating any experiences of gender dysphoria, and helping you dismantle internalized transphobia (i.e. transphobia we have learned to enforce on ourselves). I can also write WPATH letters for gender-affirming medical treatments. All of this is in an effort to help you live your best trans/gender expansive life, because trans is beautiful!
EMDR is a structured approach to treating any mental health issue that's "stuck", especially effective and designed for folks with trauma. I use this type of therapy with anyone wanting to work directly on trauma. It is an evidence-based practice (proven time and again to be effective) in the treatment of trauma, both single-event trauma and chronic/longterm traumas.
A lot of the talk therapy that I do leans on CBT influences. In this type of therapy, the general idea is that how we think has great influence on how we feel which in turn has great influence over how we behave, so if we work on unhelpful thought patterns to replace them with helpful ones, this can have a natural trickle-down to help you change how you feel and thus give you more options on how to behave. TLDR: unhelpful thoughts lead to unhelpful feelings and behaviors, and helpful thoughts can lead to more helpful feelings and behaviors.
MI is a type of therapy specifically designed to help folks build motivation to change their behavior. I learned it specifically for help with substance use/abuse counseling in order to help you figure out why you actually WANT to change your substance use beyond "I just should" or "my partner told me to". This, along with Harm Reduction, are the backbone of my talk therapy style. Harm Reduction is the idea that the perfect solution is rarely possible (for many reasons), so it helps in figuring out the next best thing that reduces the amount of harm a behavior or pattern is having on your life that's actually accessible when the perfect solution isn't.
I use Narrative Therapy as a tool to help people figure out what thoughts are your own and what are thoughts/voices that you've been taught. For example, you might have thoughts about why you should do a certain thing. Narrative helps you figure out where you learned that you "should", why, and help you discern if you actually agree with the things you've been taught. As it happens, a lot of folks have thoughts they don't actually agree with, and by separating these thoughts from your sense of self, you can choose to do something different. This can also include combatting internalized oppression (like the transphobia mentioned above, but any type of oppression).