Services
About My Clients
I often work with adults who look like they’re holding it together on the outside but are struggling on the inside. Depression, anxiety, burnout, and family-of-origin wounds tend to show up as irritability, exhaustion, or going through the motions. Many of my clients are neurodivergent, LGBTQIA2S+, or in recovery. I work with individual adults, 18 and up. If any of this sounds familiar, I’d love to help.
My Background and Approach
Shame and fear can be ways of adapting. The sense of not being enough may have pushed you to try harder. Fear may have kept you careful and safe. Those strategies work, often for years, until the cost grows too high. We’ll look at where they came from, honor what they did for you, and move toward accepting yourself as you are. My foundation is psychodynamic and humanistic, with CBT, Internal Family Systems, and attachment work woven in. In practice, we slow down, question the thoughts that keep you stuck, and make room for the parts of you that stress and responsibility pushed aside. I earned my MSW from Loyola Chicago in 2011 and worked in community mental health before a decade in tech leadership. I practice under LCSW supervision toward Oregon licensure. My training is trauma-informed, LGBTQIA2S+ affirming, and neurodivergent-affirming. I see clients in person Wednesdays on East Burnside and by telehealth Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. I offer a free 15-minute consult.
My Personal Beliefs and Interests
I came to this work because I have seen up close how mental illness and addiction can create deep wounds, wounds that can be life-threatening. I have also seen the capacity for healing in the therapeutic space, and watched people begin to thrive. That is why I’m here. I tend to believe that you can’t help people who don’t want help, and I can’t do the healing for you. What I can do is offer tools and show you a way through, and that only works if something in you wants it. You don’t need to know how to do the work or feel ready for it, but you do need to show up, and I’ll be there to support you when you do. Showing up matters to me outside the office too. I’m a neurodivergent, queer, white therapist, and I support Portland’s BIPOC-owned businesses and nonprofits, reproductive rights, and the local recovery community. I’m also an avid bowler, with a varsity letter to prove it, and I’m still mourning the loss of bowling alleys across the Portland metro.