Services
About My Clients
I work with a lot of couples, men, Type 1 Diabetics, neurodiverse clients, performers/artists, mixed race/multicultural couples and families.
My Background and Approach
My approach is compassionate, but also direct and results-oriented. I believe therapy is something we do together. My focus is on relationships, not just between yourself and other people, but also with your thoughts and feelings, your body image, identity, food, substances, habits, etc. I focus on process, on context and function, rather than merely outcomes. How did we get here? Why did this make sense, at least at one point? And, knowing that, how can we change to better align with your values and goals? My work emphasizes in-session experiential exercises to practice a more skillful relationship to the nervous system. Learning to accept and befriend the nervous system is fundamental to being able to breaking stuck cycles. It unlocks the ability to be our most courageous, creative, flexible selves, and to create new habits, relationships, and pursue a life focused on what matters.
My Personal Beliefs and Interests
One core belief that I've held since I was an adolescent is that people always do what makes sense, given the sum total of their knowledge, experiences, beliefs, traumas, skills, etc. In other words, if I were in another person's shoes, I would behave exactly as they do. Although we may not have access to all the information that would be necessary to understand a person, you can bet that if we did, we would say something like, "Of course they are that way! How else could they possibly be?" The implications for therapy are: Blame and shame have no place, and don't even make sense. Acceptance is the only sensible position. To change an outcome, we have to make the preferred behavior make sense. We must change the context. It will get better when it can get better. We can't judge ourselves into positive change. We can move us from a shame-based place of "What's wrong with me?" to a context-based "What happened to me?" and finally to an empowering stance of "What's possible?"