Licensed to practice in Colorado. Specializes in Addiction / Substance Use, Anxiety, Trauma and PTSD
New to Grow
I’m a warm, engaged therapist who genuinely enjoys working with the complicated stuff—the patterns that don’t make sense, the coping strategies that worked until they didn’t, and the parts of yourself you might not quite know what to do with. My approach is curious, collaborative, and down-to-earth. I’m an active participant in therapy: I’ll ask questions, help you make connections, offer another perspective when it might be useful, and gently challenge you when we’ve built the trust to do that. You don’t need to have everything figured out before you walk in, and there will probably be some dry humor along the way.
The first session is mostly about getting to know you and understanding what brought you to therapy. We’ll talk about what’s been going on, what you’d like to be different, what you’ve already tried, and anything from your history that feels important for me to understand. You don’t need to have a perfectly organized story or know exactly what your goals are. I’ll ask questions and help guide the conversation, and you’re always allowed to tell me when something doesn’t fit or you’re not ready to go there yet. By the end, my goal is for us to have a clearer picture of what you’re dealing with, where we might start, and whether working together feels like a good fit.
One of my biggest strengths is curiosity. I genuinely want to understand how you make sense of the world, where your patterns came from, and what keeps them going—even when those patterns seem confusing or contradictory. I’m an active participant in sessions, but I’m not going to push just for the sake of pushing. Sometimes you need someone to sit with you in something difficult. Sometimes you need help noticing a connection you haven’t seen before. And sometimes, once we have the relationship and trust to support it, I might gently challenge you to look at something differently. My own life experiences have also taught me that people are rarely as simple as they look from the outside. I’m comfortable with messiness, mixed feelings, imperfect coping, and the parts of your story you may worry someone else won’t understand. You don’t have to clean it up for me.
My ideal client is someone who knows there’s more going on beneath the surface. Maybe you understand your patterns intellectually but still find yourself repeating them. Maybe you’ve been through difficult experiences, struggle with emotions or impulsivity, use substances or other behaviors to cope, or feel like your life is more complicated than any one diagnosis can explain. You don’t have to come to therapy highly motivated or knowing exactly what you want to work on. You might be skeptical of therapy, unsure whether you’re ready to change, or frustrated because you’ve tried therapy before and it didn’t seem to get anywhere. What matters more to me is a willingness to get curious together. I especially enjoy working with people who want to understand themselves more deeply, make sense of how they got here, and eventually turn that understanding into meaningful change.
I take an integrative approach, which means I don’t believe one type of therapy works for every person or every problem. I draw from different approaches depending on what you need, whether that means understanding where a pattern came from, learning practical ways to handle what’s happening now, processing experiences that still affect you, or exploring what’s getting in the way of change. Therapy should fit you, not the other way around.
Brainspotting can help us work with experiences, emotions, or reactions that feel difficult to access or change through talking alone. We use specific points in your visual field while noticing what comes up in your body, emotions, thoughts, or memories. I use Brainspotting at your pace, giving your brain space to process without requiring you to explain or analyze everything as it happens.
I use motivational interviewing when part of you wants something to change and another part isn’t so sure. Rather than telling you what you should do, we’ll explore what matters to you, what makes change difficult, and what you want for yourself. There’s room for uncertainty and mixed feelings—we can work with where you actually are instead of where you think you’re supposed to be.
I use DBT to help you navigate intense emotions without feeling controlled by them. We may work on getting through difficult moments without making things worse, communicating more effectively, setting boundaries, and responding to emotions in ways that move you toward the life and relationships you want. I also use DBT’s balance of acceptance and change: understanding why your reactions make sense while still helping you build new ways of responding.
I use EMDR to help your brain process experiences that still feel unresolved or continue to affect how you think, feel, and react in the present. Rather than only talking through what happened, we use guided eye movements or other forms of back-and-forth stimulation while your brain works through the experience. The goal is not to erase the memory, but to help it feel less emotionally charged and have less influence over your life today.