LICSW, 8 years of experience
New to Grow
I bring authenticity and warmth to my work with clients and focus on offering a voice of compassion, curiosity, and care. I have deep respect for the ways we all adapt to the environments around us— we come by our patterning naturally, with our bodies and minds doing their best to keep us safe! I honor the pace and direction that clients set for growth and change. Drawing from extensive experience in mindfulness meditation and education in trauma healing methods such as IFS and Somatic Experiencing, I support clients with building greater awareness of their inner worlds and with learning to respond skillfully and compassionately to all that arises.
In our first couple of sessions, we will focus on getting to know each other to see if we might be a good fit. You may ask me any questions you have for me, and I will want to hear from you a bit about your history and your hopes for therapy. We will also briefly review your intake documents.
I focus on building an authentic and supportive therapeutic relationships with clients. My appreciation for the strengths of the people I work with is always genuine, and I express it authentically, so I believe my clients feel my care. My approach mixes psychodynamic and somatic approaches to support fuller self-understanding as well as deep healing at the level of the nervous system. My clients (and/or their parents) often report marked symptom relief and positive changes in functioning and relationships.
We will likely be a good fit if my approaches align to some extent with what you are looking for. Whatever you may be going through or bringing to therapy with the hope of processing and healing, I am open to working with you to explore whether we might be a good fit. You may already have some idea of where you want to focus our work (eg. family/partner conflict, life transitions, anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, etc.), or perhaps you are coming to therapy with more of a general interested in having space to process life challenges, get to know yourself better, and learn healthier patterns. Either way, we can work together to identity your specific goals and decide upon what approaches might best support you.
Offering a consistent attitude of compassion towards clients and their feelings/experiences is central to my approach. I also focus on supporting clients in developing capacity to offer compassion to themselves, which can involve identifying and working to understand barriers to self-compassion as well as behavioral and cognitive strategies to build the habit of self-compassion.
Recognizing, celebrating, and building from clients' unique strengths is a big part of how I approach my work! There is no denying that doing inner-work can feel tough at times, but it also can be really explorative and fun especially when we focus on bringing a clients natural abilities and talents into the therapeutic process. Surviving the ups and downs of life AND coming to therapy?! That already demonstrates a heck of a lot of strength to appreciate and build upon.
I am currently in a 3-year training to be Somatic Experiencing Practitioner. I have also done training in Mindfulness education, and I am a longterm meditation practitioner. I incorporate somatic and mindfulness approaches by teaching and supporting clients to tune into and respond to cues from their individual nervous systems. I believe these approaches can be incredibly powerful for supporting the deep and intrinsic learning of regulation, healing, and resilience. I typically offer somatic approaches and nervous system psychoeducation in tandem with cognitive, psychodynamic, and relational approaches, always depending on the individual needs and preferences of each client.
I draw from psychodynamic approaches, such as IFS and narrative therapy, to support clients in getting to know their inner worlds more deeply. Psychodynamic work can help people make connections between past and present experiences/thoughts/feelings. It also can support people to relate to challenging elements of their inner worlds with curiosity and care rather than shame or over-identification.
With extensive training in the ARC (Attachment, Regulation, & Competency) framework, I bring to my work an understanding of ways that different types of trauma (anything that overwhelms the nervous system to the point of getting "stuck") may impact development, functioning, relationships, and/or overall health. Building a therapeutic relationship that feels safe and trusting is important for working with trauma, so this is always a primary focus. From there, together we may identify specific approaches for healing or practice with particular skills (eg. regulation, relational, executive functioning, etc.) that can help alleviate the challenging impacts of trauma.