Services
- Individual
- Couples
- Family
- Adolescent/Teen
- Group
About My Clients
Finding the right fit in a therapist is essential. Research tells us that good fit is more important than any technique or theoretical approach a therapist might use. My clients are looking for a space where they can feel safe to do hard work. They are curious and not afraid of difficult questions. My clients want a space that both holds their pain and challenges their patterns. I get what it feels like to feel stuck...seemingly unable to move forward or backward. You CAN find a way through.
My Background and Approach
I started my work in the field of therapy in California, where I received my graduate degree in marriage, family, and child counseling. I went on to live overseas in the Czech Republic and then to Tennessee where I started my private practice and completed my PhD. I taught full time at a graduate school training therapists in Charlotte, NC and am still a professor of psychology. I currently live in Austin, TX where I run my own group practice. I am a queer, lesbian identifying therapist with a background in conservative evangelical culture. I have extensive experience through practice, teaching, and research in life transitions, couples work, sexuality, spirituality, depression, anxiety, anger, trauma, parenting, ADHD, grief, issues of diversity, and LGBTQIA-related issues. I have a special love for working with therapists and pastors as clients because healers need healing spaces, too. My main work is in relationships...with others, yourself and whatever spirituality you call home.
My Personal Beliefs and Interests
In part, I am a midwife. I sit with my clients in some of their darkest moments. The Hebrew word for crisis is an old word for "birthstool". What a poignant and descriptive word. Waves of pain. Isolation. And? Quite often the place of birth. It can feel unbearable. How can we sit together and work through these contractions to see the new life on the other side? This space is where I work with my clients. I also see my practice as an act of resistance against the heteropatriarchal systemic norm. As therapists we have to ask ourselves a question: "Am I using the interventions I have learned to help someone grow...or to make them more mainstream and 'western white'." I work to stay aware of the hidden curriculum that we each swim in on a daily basis and what that curriculum is teaching us about ourselves, our well being, and our relationships. My own growth is imperative. A good therapist is a self-aware therapist. I commit to doing my own work so that I bring my best to my clients.