Couples Therapy
$200/50 minutes
Are you struggling in your relationship? Maybe it seems that all you do is argue anymore. Or you feel like you’ve grown apart from each other and have become more like roommates than partners. Maybe you’ve reached a new life stage or major transition in your relationship and you’re not quite sure how to navigate it. These issues have something in common happening at their core: protective coping strategies are creating tension and rupture where there once was connection. All couples exhibit these coping strategies and when they become extreme, the relationship suffers as we find ourselves having to choose between self-protection and connection. Conflict becomes repetitive, ineffective, and destructive. In couples therapy, I'll help you notice and address these protective behaviors that are keeping you out of connection and inhibiting secure, authentic attachment with your partner. I want to help you learn how to have courageous, vulnerable communication that creates open-hearted connection instead of discord. My hope is that you'll discover all the ways in which your own protective mechanisms are actually just vulnerable parts of you looking for connection, and when you bring your presence to them, you'll be able to show up more authentically in your relationship.
“Instead of looking for a person who checks all the boxes, focus on a person with whom you can imagine yourself writing a story with that entails edits and revisions.”
―Esther Perel
Individual Therapy
$185/50 minutes
Therapy for Trauma
Trauma is a broad concept used to define experiences that have left a profound mark on an individual. Research has revealed just how significant the impact of experiencing trauma can be. It leaves not only mental or emotional marks, but actually shapes our internal physiology, leaving imprints on the nervous system and our brain, down to a cellular level. Trauma can show up in many different ways in someone's life and and will look different from one individual to the next. Unresolved trauma often manifests in the formation of protective coping strategies. Some ways that the aftermath of trauma can show up are: perfectionism, overachieving, anxiety, depression, people-pleasing, fear of failure, low self-esteem, bouts of rage and anger, helplessness, feeling stuck and unable to move forward, or constant fight-or-flight activation. These are usually the behaviors that bring clients to therapy. Let's find out together how your system learned to protect itself and work to heal the underlying wounds so you can shed the armor and live more authentically.
“Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness.”
― Peter A. Levine
IFS-Informed Therapy
Individual Therapy
$185/50 minutes
Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a therapeutic orientation that believes in the multiplicity of the mind; that is to say that we are made up of various parts as well as an inner Self. The "Self" is innate in all of us. It possesses confidence and clarity and is capable of healing. Our "parts" have valuable resources and strengths; some are protective, some are more vulnerable. When our vulnerable parts have endured trauma or pain, they may become exiled, needing our presence and attention to heal them and bring them peace. When our protective parts are forced into extreme roles, we may exhibit behaviors that become destructive and detrimental, interfering with our lives. IFS provides us a way to access these parts and help them out of these extreme roles in order to create internal harmony, peace, and healing. IFS is a somatic-based modality that uses a bottom-up approach to addressing mental health concerns and trauma.
“The big insight was that giving a troubled person a psychiatric diagnosis and seeing that as the sole or main cause of their symptoms was unnecessarily limiting, pathologizing, and could become self-reinforcing.”
― Richard Schwartz
Who I may be a good fit for:
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Clients who are motivated for change, but don't have the tools or knowledge about how
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Clients who have a lot of insight, but get stuck in implementing change or putting the work into practice
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Clients who are experiencing effects of trauma in their everyday lives and relationships
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Clients who are interested in bottom-up modalities like somatic interventions, parts work, and polyvagal approaches to therapy
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Clients who are interested or curious about nervous system regulation as a part of healing and wellness
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Clients who are deeply invested in healing and bringing a higher level of consciousness to their life
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Clients who want an authentic therapist who is human and keeps it real, who brings humor and profanity into sessions because sometimes that's healing, too
Who I may NOT be a good fit for:
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Clients who need a higher level of care
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Clients who are experiencing active suicidality or ongoing self-harm
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Clients who are struggling with active substance abuse
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Clients who prefer in-office sessions (my practice is currently virtual)
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Clients who are more interested in top-down approaches to therapy (CBT, solution-focused)
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Although this might mean that I'm not the right therapist for you, you still deserve care by a provider that can safety and effectively meet your needs. I can help point you in the direction of resources better suited for you.