LMFT, 5 years of experience
New to Grow
I am a queer, neurodivergent, fat positive therapist. I am dedicated to creating an inclusive environment that celebrates diversity for all clients. I show up for you in a way that is always honest and compassionate. I create space for a judgement free environment to give you the space to explore yourself, your thoughts, and your emotions. It has been shown that what matters most to people is the connection they feel to their therapist despite what methods the therapist uses. I take great care in creating and maintaining that bond.
Our first session will start with me introducing myself, reviewing informed consent with you, and then me starting to get to know you. I will likely ask more questions in the first session than I would in following sessions. I will not push you to open up too hard or too fast. I make sure to check in with you after the session to see how you are feeling and invite you to identify self-care you can do for yourself after the session as well.
My greatest strengths as a therapist is that I am very real with myself and others. I am genuinely curious about you and your life and how we can work as a team to get you to where you want to be. I ask thought provoking questions and am a truly non-judgmental person. What makes me stand out from the crowd is that I have had a lot of hard things happen in life. I can relate to many different hardships someone might be going through. And even if I have not had the exact experience you're experiencing, I have an abundance of empathy not sympathy. Sympathy would be feeling bad for you which implies a certain level of thinking someone is above another person and does not make the person being vulnerable and sharing with you feel seen or safe. With empathizing, I can imagine how it might feel and how I would want to be treated if I were in that position.
I enjoy working with the queer community as I am part of the community. My dream client is motivated to use what they learn in session outside of session. Someone who is willing to try new things in order to build up their "toolbox" of coping strategies that work for them. My favorite start to a session is "I was thinking about something we talked about" I have found that is where meaningful growth happens for most. My dream client shows up as themselves and feels comfortable enough with me to give me feedback on how I could make you feel you are getting the most out of therapy.
I use CBT in order to identify harmful automatic thought patterns that are responsible for many other undesired thoughts and actions. When we work on the root other issues can start to solve themselves. Our minds are powerful and the first step to change is identifying and restructuring automatic thoughts.
I have years of experience helping people process their grief. As someone who has experienced grief myself I bring empathy and compassion with me into session and hold space for you to process.
Sometimes it helps to create distance from the problem and yourself to take guilt out of the equation. I have found this to work very well for people. There is the factual thing that happened and then the meaning we assign to it and being able to identify that meaning and change it can be very powerful.
Using mindfulness and connection from thoughts to feelings. I especially enjoy using DBT in conjunction with CBT in order to focus on thoughts and emotions more equally.
This modality can help bridge the gap between thinking about making changes and implementing the changes. This is the step I find people tend to struggle with the most.