The most powerful agent of change in therapy is our relationship. Beyond any modality or technique, a trusting relationship between client and therapist is the most important predictor of success. My greatest strength is to meet you exactly where you are with compassion, positive regard, and a sense of humor. I’m here to help you get out of your own way by shining a gentle, compassionate light on your blind spots. The places inside of us where we hide out (in denial, excuses, projecting blame, defeatism, etc), are actually where we can discover our personal power.

I also use a model called Internal Family Systems (IFS), which approaches the mind in terms of the different “parts” of us: for example, one part of us might want to eat salad and go to bed early, while another wants to stay up late eating cheese dip and watching true crime TV. Our parts create an inner “family” that relate to each other: a child, a critic, a protector, a version of us that experienced something terrible. One that holds unexpressed rage, one that fears abandonment, one that manages all the others with perfectionism, denial, people pleasing. This model provides a map that helps us track our feelings and behaviors to parts of us that need healing. It is a powerful way of learning to turn toward these parts of ourselves with care, rather than the typical strategies of shaming, strong-arming, and silencing parts of us that don’t meet our approval.

As a trauma-informed therapist, I work with the nervous system to help you learn to regulate your emotions when they feel overwhelming. I’ll teach you strategies that can help you manage feeling “triggered,” shut down, or panicked. I will also help you process traumatic events that may be keeping your nervous system in a state of activation and getting in the way of seeing things clearly. For this I use IFS and Somatic/Attachment Focused EMDR, which can foster significant emotional shifts.