Licensed to practice in 3 states and accepts 10 insurances. Specializes in Trauma and PTSD, First Responders/Healthcare Workers, Military/Veterans and 9 more.
New to Grow
I come from a first responder family, and it shaped how I understand the people I work with. I built my practice specifically for law enforcement, fire, EMS, dispatchers/911, and veterans — people who carry things most providers have never had to sit with, let alone treat. I'm not interested in being another therapist who nods along without understanding the job. I get it, and that changes what happens in the room. Not all the work is about the job, either. Plenty of clients come to me for personal issues — relationship struggles, childhood stuff, grief, anxiety, things that have nothing to do with the badge or uniform. Being from this world just means I already understand the context you're operating in, whatever you're bringing to the room. I use evidence-based treatments — including EMDR, Brainspotting, and Prolonged Exposure, among others — to help clients process trauma that others may not fully understand. I also draw on Critical Incident Stress Management and Psychological First Aid for cumulative exposure, not just single-incident trauma. Whether it's an officer-involved shooting, years of runs finally catching up with someone, or something from long before the job started, I know how to work with it directly instead of dancing around it. My style is direct and less formal. I'm not going to make you explain your job to me or treat your coping mechanisms as automatically pathological. I'll call things what they are and won't waste your time with fluff. I work entirely via telehealth — meet with me from home, your vehicle between calls, wherever gives you privacy. If you want a therapist who won't flinch and actually understands the world you operate in, I'd like to work with you.
Your first session is mostly about getting a real picture of what's going on, not filling out a checklist. I'll ask about what brought you in, what your day-to-day looks like, and what you're hoping is different six months from now. If you're a first responder or veteran, I'm not going to make you explain your job or translate your language for me — that ground is already covered. I'll also ask some standard intake questions: history, current symptoms, safety, medications if relevant, that kind of thing. It's not a deep dive into every detail of your life on day one. Think of it as enough for me to understand where to start, not a full download. I'll also tell you a bit about myself. I wouldn't open up to someone I didn't know anything about, and I don't expect you to either. You're welcome — encouraged, actually — to ask me questions and vet me the same way you'd vet anyone you're about to trust with something difficult. You don't need to have the right words or a clear narrative walked in the door. A lot of people show up unsure how to explain what's wrong, just that something is. That's fine. My job in that first session is to help sort through it with you, not judge how well you presented it. I'll be direct with you about what I'm seeing and what I think would help, and I expect the same honesty back — if something doesn't land, tell me. By the end of the session, you should have a sense of whether we're a fit. If we're not, I won't be offended, and I'll do what I can to help you find someone who is. Not every therapist works for every person, and forcing it doesn't help either of us. Sessions are telehealth, so log in from wherever gives you privacy — home, your vehicle, wherever works. No waiting room, no risk of running into someone from work.
I don't come at this work from theory alone — I come from a first responder family, and I've spent years doing on-scene crisis response and post-incident support directly with first responder agencies, not just treating people after the fact in an office. I've sat with departments in the immediate aftermath of critical incidents. That's not something you learn from a textbook, and it changes how I show up in the room. I've also had my own hard stretches — professionally and personally — that mean I'm not coming at your struggles from a place of untested theory. I'm not going to pretend I've never been knocked down. That's part of why I don't do the detached-clinician thing. I tend to push back and challenge more than I sit back and hold space. Holding space has its place, but a lot of people — especially the population I work with — have had enough people nod sympathetically without actually getting anywhere. If I see you avoiding something, minimizing something, or talking yourself out of what you actually need, I'll name it. I'd rather risk a session feeling uncomfortable than let you leave in the same place you walked in. What makes this work stand out isn't a specific technique — it's that I'm not learning your world for the first time when you sit down. I already know what shift work does to a marriage, what it's like to be the only one who understands why you're checking exits in a restaurant, or why "just talk about it" sounds like a joke to someone who's seen the things you've seen. I get the morbid humor and the cussing too — you don't have to clean yourself up for me. That context means less time spent explaining and more time spent actually working.
My ideal client is someone who's tired of performing okay-ness and is ready to actually deal with what's underneath it. They're usually high-functioning on the surface — holding down a demanding job, showing up for their family, keeping it together in front of coworkers — while privately dealing with something they haven't let themselves fully look at. That could be a specific incident, years of accumulated exposure, a marriage falling apart from the weight of the job, guilt they can't shake, or substance use that started as coping and became a problem. They don't need to walk in with polished insight or the "right" way to talk about their issues. What they do need is a willingness to be direct with me and to tolerate being challenged when it's warranted. My ideal client isn't looking for someone to just validate every decision — they want someone who will tell them the truth, even when it's uncomfortable, because they're smart enough to know that's actually more useful than being coddled. They're often skeptical of therapy going in, sometimes because a past experience felt too soft or too clinical, sometimes because their culture — first responder, military, high-pressure executive — treats asking for help as weakness. I like working with people who are a little resistant at first, because once they realize I'm not going to make them perform vulnerability or explain their world to me from scratch, they tend to actually engage. Their goals vary — some want symptom relief, some want to fix a relationship, some just want to stop feeling like they're one bad day from falling apart — but what they share is wanting real change, not just somewhere to vent for fifty minutes a week.
I use EMDR to help clients work through themes and beliefs that stay stuck even when we consciously try to change them — patterns like "I should have done something differently" or "I can't trust anyone" that persist no matter how much someone logically knows better. These often trace back to a specific incident, though they can build up from years of cumulative experience too. The process involves recalling what's connected to that theme while doing a specific type of bilateral stimulation — usually eye movements or alternating taps — while I guide the session. It sounds strange until you do it, but it seems to help the brain finish processing something that got frozen in place, so the belief loosens its grip instead of running the show. Clients don't forget what happened; the memory just stops carrying the same emotional charge. I like EMDR for clients who don't want to spend months talking around a specific event or belief — people who are ready to deal with it directly and want to see real movement in a reasonable number of sessions rather than open-ended processing.
I use Prolonged Exposure to help clients stop avoiding the memories, places, or situations that trigger their trauma response. Avoidance feels protective in the moment, but it's usually what keeps someone stuck — the more you avoid something, the bigger and scarier it stays in your mind. In session, we work through the traumatic memory directly and repeatedly, in a controlled way, until it stops carrying the same level of distress. Outside of session, I also help clients gradually face real-world situations they've been avoiding — driving certain routes, being around specific sounds or crowds, whatever's been shrinking their life. The goal isn't to force someone into distress for no reason; it's to prove to their nervous system that the danger has passed, even though the memory hasn't. It's demanding work, and I'm upfront about that. It's not for someone looking for something gentle or slow-paced. But for clients who are ready to stop organizing their whole life around what they're avoiding, it tends to produce faster, more concrete results than approaches that stay at a safer distance from the trauma itself.
I use CBT to help clients see the link between their thoughts, feelings, and behavior — and then actually shift the pattern instead of just talking about it. A lot of people come in stuck in loops: a thought triggers a feeling, the feeling drives a behavior, and the behavior reinforces the original thought. That might look like assuming the worst about a situation, avoiding something because of that assumption, and then feeling more anxious because the avoidance never let them test whether the assumption was even true. We work on identifying those patterns as they're happening, not just after the fact, and building more realistic ways of thinking that actually hold up under pressure. It's structured and goal-oriented — we're working toward something specific, not just processing week to week with no direction. It works well for anxiety, depression, relationship conflict, and everyday stress that's built up into bigger patterns. I use it especially with clients who want practical tools they can apply in the moment, not just insight for its own sake.
Grief work makes up a real part of my practice, and I don't treat it like a problem to be fixed on a timeline. First responders and veterans deal with a specific kind of grief that often gets overlooked — not just losing someone close to them, but the cumulative loss that comes from the job itself: coworkers, the version of themselves before the work changed them, or a sense of safety they can't get back. I help clients understand that grief isn't linear and there's no schedule they're supposed to be on. Some sessions are about the loss directly; others are about what's changed in someone's life because of it — relationships that shifted, identity questions, anger that doesn't have anywhere obvious to go. I don't push people to "move on" or force closure that isn't there yet. What I focus on is helping clients carry the loss in a way that lets them keep functioning and stay connected to people who are still here, rather than getting stuck in either avoidance or being consumed by it.