Licensed to practice in Oregon and accepts 10 insurances. Specializes in Life Transitions, Trauma and PTSD, Anxiety
(he/him)
New to Grow
I help adults, teens, and couples reduce anxiety, heal trauma, improve relationships, and build lasting self-regulation through collaborative, practical therapy. Evening and overnight appointments are available. The techniques we use are proven to help the brain balance by balancing focus and relaxation to heal or significantly sleep struggles, anxiety, depression, trauma, ADHD, autism and other things by balancing brain blood flow. I share optional tools like a brain balancing sound system, heart monitors that teach how to relax and control attention for easily, and other things we use while talking and coming up with solutions like relaxation and visualization. I am trained in teaching communication skills and relationship therapy, along with teaching people to see family patterns and defense patterns in themselves. You get to keep the tools you can use in an ongoing way during and after working with me. It accelerates learning. I like to talk as if we are collaborating, like friends at a cafe, and with insight and light humor. I believe therapy is most effective when it combines scientific understanding with connection, empathy, curiosity, and respect (I also value spirituality). This is deeply personalized counseling. More About the Tools You Can Keep: We can use live brain or heart feedback in a heart monitor practice mindfulness, visualize a peaceful future, and gently heal painful memories. For game oriented clients, I even use a fun, game-based system as homework, helping them build attention and emotional control while earning points in puzzle games. We can use simple, insightful questionnaires to discover your specific brain type. This takes guesswork out of mindfulness. For relationships, we use the assessments to understand your brain based temperament. We practice how you shift into a natural state of mental "flow".
The first session is a relaxed conversation where talk about what you want to achieve, what is happening, and some simple general questions. I don't go through a typical list questions, it happens in a relaxing way that is personalized to you. We will go over things like your personal style of learning and things you are doing that are healing, with your concerns. We might also do a Brain Type test from The Amen Clinics to help us know how you will have more balance and fulfillment. The Goal: Whether we are using high-tech biofeedback, looking at brain types, or simply having an open, curious conversation, my focus is on helping you find your unique mental flow. This collaborative process is meant to be an insightful, deeply supportive, and sometimes even lighthearted connection that gives you practical things to practice between our sessions. I will teach you straightforward, practical ways create more calm attention, transform limiting beliefs, and look at how your daily thoughts are driving your behaviors.Internal Family Systems (IFS): We will collaborate to identify the different "parts" of yourself—the parts that manage your day, the parts that step in to "firefight" or escape when things get hard, and your core Self. This allows us to heal internal defensiveness and rise to a permanent state of calm clarity. I have worked with patients from The Mayo Clinic, The University of Minnesota Medical Center, Hazelden, and other places. I have also taught staff from these places. I also developed the first training for teaching clients better self regulation with live heart and brain monitoring for the largest healthcare system in Minnesota (Fairview Health).
To help you reduce stress, process trauma, and increase your focus, creativity, and overall performance, I integrate traditional talk therapy with objective, state-of-the-art brain and relationship assessments. Together, we will use:Clinical Biofeedback: I teach you how to actively cultivate calm and self-regulation using a low-cost heart monitor. You will visually observe your own physiological responses, like heart rate patterns, in real-time. We use easy brain type tests that are like Myers-Briggs for the brain from a leading neurology clinic to help you balance your brain and understand ways to balance attention, anxiety, and heal. It also makes customizing mindfulness or working with psychiatry staff faster. We customize mindfulness you can use during the day, including while visualizing the future, and gently heal painful memories. For younger clients, I even use a fun, game-based biofeedback system as homework, helping them build attention and emotional control while earning points in puzzle games.Amen Clinic Brain-Type & ADD Type Assessments: We will use simple, insightful questionnaires to discover your specific brain type and ADD subtype. This takes the guesswork out of mindfulness, showing us exactly how your brain processes information and stress so we can tailor your exercises to your brain's natural biology.Helen Fisher "Anatomy of Love" Test: For relationship dynamics, we utilize this scientifically validated assessment to understand your biological temperament. By looking at how your brain's natural chemical systems (dopamine, serotonin, testosterone, and estrogen) influence who you are, we can pinpoint how you communicate, handle conflict, and bond with partners. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT): I will teach you straightforward, practical ways to catch distorted thinking patterns, transform limiting beliefs, and look at how your daily thoughts are driving your behaviors.Internal Family Systems (IFS): We will collaborate to identify the different "parts" of yourself—the parts that manage your day, the parts that step in to "firefight" or escape when things get hard, and your core Self. This allows us to heal internal defensiveness and rise to a permanent state of calm clarity. The Goal: Whether we are using high-tech biofeedback, looking at brain types, or simply having an open, curious conversation, my focus is on helping you find your unique mental flow. This collaborative process is meant to be an insightful, deeply supportive
I think the clients that work the best with me are trying to self-regulate better, don't care for pathologizing much, want an even balance of empathy in relationships and mindfulness for self control. They tend to be self-seekers to a certain degree (researchers), and they tend to be independent in the way they think. Sometimes they are sensitive, entrepreneurial, artistic, or sometimes deeply in to science or spirituality in some way. The main thing is they are wanting to put together or "integrate" their sense of themselves that is spread thin by practical needs, while at the same time becoming really good at the practical needs. The way I work helps with trauma, addiction, sleep, attention, memory, anxiety/depression, and uses visualization to help with life changes. When I work with people in odd hours, part of it is to problem solve the day-to-day problems too.
Biofeedback
I teach clients how to create more calm attention with a low cost heart monitor that shows them when they are keeping their heart and attention calm. We use it to also do visualization about the future or healing memories. It helps raise health, creativity, and helps memory, anxiety, and autism and ADHD. For kids, I teach people how to use a fun game system as homework where they practice keeping their attention and heart calmer to score more points on puzzle games. With practice, people can change their automatic responses and heal memories. It also helps with mentally rehearsing for things in the future.
Cognitive Behavioral (CBT)
I teach clients simple ways to catch distorted thinking or use visualization. There can also be homework to work on thoughts and beliefs. We look at how thoughts are leading to behaviors, and how to transform them.
Mindfulness-Based Therapy
I teach clients different techniques for more focus or more relaxed attention that fit them, and that are based on a brain test we can use to see there their strengths and struggles are (it is easy to do, and fast).
Eclectic
I use easy tests that show us "brain types" from a respected neurology clinica that are like a Meyer's Briggs Test for the brain. It tells us how to balance your brain easier with personalized mindfulness or other things in our conversation, but also shows strengths and weaknesses. As people grow , they learn to balance their brain more. I have studied a lot of approaches. People also experience separate parts of themselves, and lower and higher levels of awareness or ability to act or plan. We work on different levels of the self with a lot of tools. We all have attention, will-power, self-concepts, feelings, and thoughts. These are levels that are all flowing when we are at our best. I have also worked with people to teach them to balance focus and attention in their brain patterns. It creates "mental flow". This can all be fun and funny too. The mental flow helps creativity, healing, and also lowers defenses (there is a lot of brain science behind this). I also have training in how we set goals to compensate or over-compensate ("aka psychodynamics"), and this can help with tracking family patterns from from one generation to another while increasing health and happiness. Another thing that can also help is birth order psychology, which was in my graduate program...there are many things that come up. The key thing is that I just talk with people, and guide as we go in a collaborative way. It is meant as an insightful connection with optional things to practice between sessions.
Internal Family Systems (IFS)
This is a way to identify when we feel complete or clear, and then when we feel parts that are managing, firefighting, or escaping. It is a way to work with internal family reactions in relationships, memory's, and defensiveness to rise to a higher date of calm. This fits in with the self-regulation and mindfulness work I do.