Services
About My Clients
My clients are adults who tend to be genderqueer, queer, neurodiverse, or looking for a kink and poly-affirming space. While a whole range of concerns, thoughts, and feelings are welcome in the counseling space, common threads for folks are making sense of their suffering, understanding themselves better, finding greater peace and joy, and getting along with others a bit more effectively. Trans-affirming and queer-affirming therapy in Portland.
My Background and Approach
I believe that beginning counseling is a brave act, whether you have already had some counseling or this is your first time. I believe the concerns you have—such as relationship and communication struggles, motivation problems, the stains of trauma, systemic oppression, and grief--are all valid and deserving of caring attention. I use somatic, parts work, and mindfulness practices to help you cultivate greater understanding, peace, and balance among all the parts that make you you, and to learn to soothe your nervous system. My framework incorporates humanistic and existential components because I believe all humans deserve a kind, patient space to discuss what is important to them, so they might become a more confident, clarified version of themselves. Counseling allows you space and time to explore what that means to you. I tend to incorporate music and art practices to provide a nonverbal means of expressing and exploring yourself.
My Personal Beliefs and Interests
Not everyone has the good luck of being born into a supportive family that loves hard, listens intently, and cares about the influence of generational trauma and systemic oppression. Alternatively, many of us, especially those who are queer and neurodiverse, have pasts that are far from ideal, and we struggle to navigate a culture laden with historical oppression. This makes it hard to form secure relationships, cultivate healthy habits, and even understand why we’re struggling at all. I became a counselor to provide a space where clients unburden themselves, learn how to unwind, come to understand the world around them a bit better, and form a community that reflects their values while letting their true selves shine. For me, that means gaining resilience amid systems we do not agree with, listening more acutely, caring more deeply, and uplifting our voices more freely. What does it mean to you?