My approach to individual therapy starts with collaborating with you to understand your goals for therapy, your formative life experiences, and the challenges you are currently facing in your life.

The Core of My Approach

At the core of effective therapy is a therapeutic relationship that feels right. A central focus of my role as a therapist is to create a space and rapport with you where you will feel safe, free of judgement, and able to be yourself and talk about your life openly.

As human beings, we have core needs from childhood and throughout our whole lives to feel understood and accepted in our authentic emotional experience (including in our sadness, anger, grief, shame, and joy) by others whom we trust.

I strive to help meet this need in my clients by being attuned to your emotions, picking up on the subtleties of your facial expressions and body language, and looking for the currents of feeling that may lie underneath the surface of the words you are sharing. To feel felt by another person in a safe and caring way is a profound and healing experience.

Working With the Unconscious and Healing Emotional Wounds

From this core of safety, acceptance, relational warmth, and emotional attunement, our therapy can take a number of different directions depending on your needs and goals (some of which will likely change or be revealed as we work together).

Therapy work often involves bringing awareness to what is unconscious. We are all shaped by our early life experiences with caregivers, in our schools and communities, and in the cultures we are embedded in. We internalize beliefs about ourselves and our worth, what we need to hide about ourselves vs. what behaviors and traits are rewarded, what to expect from other people, what love and relationships look like, and how safe and confident we can feel in the world.

By exploring the issues you are facing in your life, and understanding the past experiences that inform your present, we will uncover the beliefs you carry with you (many of which may be painful and limiting). Sometimes they are so deeply embedded in us that we could not imagine a reality without them. By working with these beliefs and the emotions that go along with them (which are often locked away from conscious awareness), we can begin to unwind beliefs, fears, and emotional blocks that are contributing to challenges in your present life.

I use the following evidence-based trauma-focused therapies to help you lighten the burdens of the past and support your growth.

• Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP) - This trauma-focused therapy addresses the way that cognitive problem solving often does not get at the root cause of our distress. AEDP emphasizes that real healing comes from tuning in with our deeper emotions and processing them in new and unexpected ways that lead to lasting changes in our relationship with ourselves and others. We work to create new experiences directly in session that rewire old perceptions and stuck emotional patterns.

• Internal Family Systems (IFS) - IFS is a model of “parts work.” This modality offers a roadmap to understanding the organization of your mind and the “why“ behind strong emotions and persistent inner conflicts that may be hard to make sense of. IFS also offers tools for bringing change and resolution to these patterns and painful experiences.

• Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) - EMDR is a leading treatment for PTSD and trauma (with extensive research support) that uses a unique treatment approach to reduce the charge of traumatic memories and integrate more empowering beliefs about yourself. Click here to read more about it.

Cognitive, Behavioral, and Mindfulness-Based Approaches

While I often use trauma and emotion-focused approaches, there are many situations where cognitive and behavioral interventions (or other skill-based approaches) are extremely useful and the most appropriate tool for a situation.

Drawing on these tools, we will also work to:

• Develop attitudes and perspectives that help you better meet the challenges of your life (by questioning the assumptions and beliefs that may be limiting your life in unnecessary ways)

• Gain clarity on your values and the goals you wish to pursue

• Develop skills to better manage emotions and difficult thoughts (so they don’t get in the way of doing what really matters to you)

• Make action plans to take specific actions in your life to support your goals and needs

• Develop skills in relationships to communicate more effectively, advocate for your needs, set boundaries, navigate conflict, and maintain healthy and realistic expectations

• Cultivate compassion and empathy for yourself and others (including the parts of you that you don’t like, or that cause trouble for you—without giving those parts the reins of your life)

• Gain knowledge about yourself: your needs, your temperament, your preferences, and what you can change in yourself vs what needs acceptance

Overall

Whatever approach we take, you will find that I am not just a passive listener. I am actively engaged in the therapy process, asking questions, attuning to emotions and subtle dynamics playing out in the session, and offering education and alternative perspectives when appropriate.

Additionally, I bring my own humanity to sessions and will relate to you from that place (without ever making our sessions about myself). This means that I will relate to you with the empathy and understanding of someone who has known pain and adversity. In our sessions, we will be two humans together, being real, sitting with the messiness of life, and finding pathways forward.