Psychotherapy

I conduct individual and couple psychotherapy with adults and adolescents.  Through training and work in diverse settings I have gained experience with a broad range of clients and issues. 

Some of the issues that I commonly help clients with in therapy are:

  • Anxiety
  • Depression
  • Men's issues
  • LGBTQ issues
  • Traumatic life events
  • Relationship difficulties
  • Challenges at work or school
  • Negative thinking patterns
  • Self-esteem
  • Improving life satisfaction
  • Identity exploration

My Approach

My orientation as a therapist is chiefly relational and psychodynamic. Coming from this approach, I am often interested in clients’ experiences of themselves and of important others, with particular attention to problematic attachments or patterns that have emerged. Oftentimes, these patterns are entrenched in past conflicts or experiences that have gone unprocessed. In other cases, new situations and changes—a new partner, a big move, an expanding family or career, to name a few possibilities—take us off guard, and our typical ways of managing life’s challenges may suddenly fall short.

In my work with clients, I strive to maintain a strong focus on the relationship—both the therapeutic and real, human relationship—between the client and me. To this end, I believe that the therapeutic relationship is itself a powerful agent for change and can serve as a foundation for addressing numerous real-world problems. As a psychologist, I aim to serve as a secure base for exploration and insight building.

At the same time, I readily integrate other treatments given the nature of your particular concerns and goals. I enjoy bringing in cognitive-behavioral techniques, for example, with clients struggling with persistent rumination, negative self-talk, or low motivation. It can be helpful to identify especially unhelpful or upsetting thoughts that get in the way of one’s daily life and to really examine the evidence behind these negative thinking patterns.

Finally, my background in community advocacy and commitment to social justice greatly inform my overall approach. I find it especially important to provide a space where social identities are welcomed and affirmed. Frequently, too, I encourage discussion of larger systems of discrimination, oppression, or persistent invalidation, and I believe these should not be discounted in one’s experiences of psychological pain.