Licensed to practice in 2 states. Specializes in Attachment Issues, Life Transitions, Trauma and PTSD and 10 more.
(she/her)
New to Grow
My style is warm, curious, engaged, and down-to-earth. I’m not the kind of therapist who sits silently and occasionally asks, “How does that make you feel?” I’ll be right there with you—asking questions, noticing patterns, offering perspective, and sometimes bringing humor into the room when it feels right. I work especially well with thoughtful, self-aware people who have done a lot of thinking about themselves but still find themselves caught in patterns they can’t quite think their way out of. You may be successful and capable on the outside while privately struggling with anxiety, self-doubt, perfectionism, relationship patterns, or a persistent sense that something is missing. I also work with people who feel disconnected—from their emotions, their relationships, or even themselves. Sometimes that disconnection developed for very good reasons. If you learned early in life to stay in control, rely on yourself, push feelings aside, or keep others at a distance, those strategies may have helped you survive difficult experiences but now leave you feeling stuck or alone. My approach is grounded largely in Internal Family Systems (IFS), attachment, mindfulness, and somatic work. Rather than asking, “What’s wrong with you?” we get curious about what happened, what you learned to do to survive or belong, and what different parts of you may still be trying to protect. Our work is about more than understanding yourself. It’s about experiencing yourself differently—with more compassion, more choice, deeper connection, and less internal noise.
My hope is that you leave our first session feeling a little lighter—not because we’ve solved everything, but because you no longer feel quite so alone with it. The first session is an opportunity for me to begin understanding not just what brought you to therapy, but *you*. I’ll want to know what’s happening now, what you’ve tried before, what you hope might be different, and what feels most important for me to understand about your experience. There’s no pressure to tell me your entire life story in 50 minutes. We’ll go at a pace that feels right. With individuals, I’m listening for both the struggles that brought you in and the patterns underneath them. We may begin noticing different parts of you—the part that worries, criticizes, overthinks, disconnects, people-pleases, or tries desperately to keep everything together—and getting curious about how those patterns came to make sense. With couples, my attention shifts from “Who’s right?” to “What happens between you?” I’m listening for the cycle you get caught in, what each of you is protecting, and the deeper needs that can become difficult to express when you’re hurt or disconnected. My role isn’t to take sides; it’s to help you understand yourselves and each other differently. Whether I’m meeting with an individual, couple, or family I hope you leave that first conversation feeling understood, respected, and hopeful—and with the sense that you don’t have to perform, impress me, or have it all figured out. You can simply show up as you are. We’ll start there.
One of my greatest strengths as a therapist is my ability to listen for what’s underneath what someone is saying—not just the story, but the patterns, emotions, beliefs, and protective strategies woven through it. I’m an active and relational therapist. I won’t sit quietly through an entire session while you wonder what I’m thinking. I’ll ask questions, reflect what I’m noticing, help you make connections, and offer another perspective when I think it could be useful. I’m also not afraid to gently challenge you. If I notice you repeating a familiar pattern, avoiding something important, or being much harder on yourself than you would ever be on someone you love, I’ll probably name it. At the same time, I don’t believe people need to be pushed past their defenses. Those defenses usually developed for a reason. Sometimes the most important thing I can do is slow down, stay with you, and create enough space for something that has been protected for a long time to emerge when it’s ready. Life has given me plenty of experience with relationships, loss, reinvention, uncertainty, and discovering that growth rarely follows the timeline we would choose for ourselves. Those experiences have made me less interested in having all the answers and much more interested in helping people discover what is true for them. I bring warmth, humor, intuition, directness, and genuine curiosity into my sessions. I’ll hold space when you need holding. I’ll challenge you when challenge serves you. And I’ll always be more interested in understanding you than judging you.
My ideal client doesn’t necessarily have a particular diagnosis or problem. What matters more to me is a willingness to become curious about yourself and the patterns that have shaped your life. I especially enjoy working with adults who find themselves at a point where the ways they’ve always coped, related, or moved through the world aren’t working as well anymore. Sometimes that happens during a major transition—a relationship beginning or ending, becoming a parent, children leaving home, career changes, loss, or simply reaching a stage of life that prompts the question, “Is this really how I want to keep living?” Others come to therapy because anxiety, trauma, self-doubt, relationship struggles, perfectionism, grief, or disconnection have begun taking up too much space. You may want deeper relationships, greater self-trust, more emotional freedom, or simply to feel more at home in your own life. I also enjoy working with couples and adult family members who care deeply about one another but have become caught in patterns of hurt, defensiveness, distance, or misunderstanding. Often, everyone involved has good intentions but can no longer find their way to one another. You don’t need to arrive comfortable with vulnerability or able to name every emotion. And you don’t need to know exactly what needs to change. What matters is a willingness to look beneath the surface. If you’re interested not only in feeling better, but in understanding yourself more deeply and creating lasting change, we’ll likely work well together.
Have you ever known exactly what you *should* do, yet found yourself doing something completely different? Maybe you long for closeness but pull away when someone gets too close. You want to set a boundary but feel guilty when you do. Or you’ve done enough therapy to understand *why* you react the way you do, but understanding hasn’t changed the reaction. IFS helps us move from talking about these patterns to experiencing and working with them differently. In a session, I may invite you to slow down and notice what happens inside when we touch something difficult. Where do you feel it in your body? What thoughts appear? Is there an impulse to explain, fix, withdraw, criticize yourself, or change the subject? Instead of pushing past that reaction, we get interested in it. We might explore what it’s trying to protect you from, what it fears would happen if it stopped, and how long it has been doing this job. Often, reactions that seem frustrating in the present make much more sense when we understand where they began. This approach can be especially helpful for attachment wounds and trauma, where your mind may know you’re safe while your body or emotions respond as though an old experience is happening again. It can also help during major life transitions, when familiar roles and ways of coping no longer fit and questions about who you are begin to surface. The goal isn’t to get rid of any part of you. It’s to help you develop a different relationship with yourself—so old experiences can inform your life without continuing to run it.
Relationships have a way of touching our most tender places. You may be confident and capable in many areas of your life, yet find yourself becoming anxious, guarded, overly accommodating, or disconnected when a relationship really matters. In our work, we may look at what you learned—often very early—about closeness, trust, conflict, expressing needs, and depending on other people. If love or connection once felt unpredictable, conditional, overwhelming, or unsafe, you may have learned to work very hard to keep relationships intact—or to protect yourself by needing very little from anyone. Rather than simply labeling these as “attachment issues,” we pay attention to how they show up in your life now. What happens inside you when someone pulls away? When you’re disappointed? When you need reassurance? When someone needs something from you? What do you do when conflict threatens connection? With individuals, we explore these patterns and create opportunities to experience relationships differently, including within the safety of the therapeutic relationship. With couples and families, we can often see the pattern unfolding between people in real time. Instead of deciding who is right or wrong, I help each person understand what lies underneath their reactions and communicate from that deeper place. The goal isn’t to become completely independent or never feel activated in relationships. It’s to develop greater security within yourself and with others—so you can stay connected without abandoning yourself, and protect yourself without having to disconnect.
You don’t have to tell me everything that happened to you in order for us to begin healing its impact. Trauma-informed care shapes *how* I approach therapy rather than being a particular technique I use. I pay attention not only to what we’re talking about, but to what is happening in your body and nervous system while we’re talking about it. If I notice that you’re becoming overwhelmed, shutting down, disconnecting, or pushing yourself to keep going because you think you “should,” we may slow down. You remain an active participant in deciding where we go and how quickly we get there. I’ll invite rather than insist, explain why I’m suggesting something, and respect a “no,” “not yet,” or “I don’t know.” Healing doesn’t require forcing yourself to revisit painful experiences before you’re ready. Sometimes our work will involve experiences from the past. Other times, we’ll focus primarily on how those experiences continue to affect your life today—your relationships, sense of safety, ability to trust, self-worth, boundaries, or connection to your own emotions and needs. I’m also attentive to the ways trauma can live beyond a single event, including childhood experiences, chronic relational wounds, sexual trauma, loss, and patterns carried through families and generations. The goal is not to erase what happened or make you endlessly revisit it. It’s to help your mind and body recognize that the past is no longer happening now—so you have more freedom to live from the person you are today.
Sometimes your body knows something before your mind does. You may notice your chest tighten during conflict, your stomach drop when someone is disappointed in you, or your whole system become restless when you try to slow down. Other times, you may feel very little at all. Numbness, disconnection, or difficulty knowing what you feel can be just as meaningful as strong physical sensations. Somatic therapy brings gentle attention to these experiences alongside the thoughts and stories we explore in traditional talk therapy. In a session, I might invite you to notice what happens in your body as you talk about something important. Does your breathing change? Do you feel tension, heaviness, warmth, an urge to move away—or nothing you can identify yet? There’s no “right” answer and no expectation that you be naturally connected to your body. We may experiment with slowing down, grounding, movement, breath, or simply staying with a sensation for a few moments and noticing what changes. The goal isn’t to analyze every physical feeling or force your body to relax. It’s to become more familiar with the signals your system is already sending and develop greater choice in how you respond to them. This can be particularly helpful when insight alone hasn’t created the change you’re looking for. You may understand a pattern completely and still feel your body react before you have time to think. By including the body in therapy, we create another pathway toward feeling more present, connected, and at home in yourself.