Services
- Individual
- Couples
- Adolescent/Teen
About My Clients
I understand that starting therapy with a total stranger takes a leap of faith. You hope that you will feel better but you can't help but worry that you wont. While I treat a variety of issues, a universal element of my work has to do with helping people see that their "problems" are not insurmountable, nor are they evidence that they are weak, stupid, or damaged. It may not come naturally to you to feel compassion for yourself but I hope that through me you will see that you deserve it.
My Background and Approach
Research has shown that the single most important aspect of a successful psychotherapy is the quality of my relationship with you, more so than any particular theory. I have been trained to pay close attention to this dynamic and I encourage my patients to talk to me about it. What our relationship feels like in the present can be a fundamental key to understanding yourself. I expect people to come to me with a wide variety of complaints, concerns, confusions…or just a general feeling of dis-ease. I have yet to meet someone who, with time and introspection, doesn’t come away realizing that the things they held themselves so harshly responsible for are explainable given their life experiences and, therefore, are deserving of compassion. However, simultaneously, many of these things need to be confronted and challenged. Holding those two seemingly disparate aspects of therapy requires skill. I both support and challenge you.
Why I Became a Therapist
Before graduate school I studied Buddhism & meditation because they offered a method of understanding "the mind". But I was also very interested in medicine and remain involved in neuroscience. I was also interested in international human rights and eventually saw that becoming a psychologist was my own way of being a social justice advocate, one person at a time. My formal training was in treating victims of trauma, but I came to see that all of us, in big or little ways, have had traumas that have made living more difficult than it needs to be. I am so grateful to be living at a time when there is so much crossover between meditation, neurology, and psychology/psychiatry. I try to incorporate the latest in each field in my work.