What is my style and approach?
At the first session, once I pick you up from the waiting room and you have a seat and we introduce ourselves to each other, I will ask you why you came in, what you are hoping to get, and what brought you in. We’ll take care of paperwork somewhere in that first session. Once you have begun to settle, you might look around, and maybe voice other concerns, and I will do my best to answer. Maybe you will tell me more of what you want to get out of the work. My style and approach are different with different people. Sometimes people just fall on the couch and start talking; that’s OK too.
Then together we will just be mindful and curious, talk and feel things out, and together we will set a pace for the work. In whatever emerges, there is information, and that can lead to new experience and change. If we stay curious, all kinds of things might arise from this attention; sadness or aliveness can surface. You may notice parts of yourself that feel new or different.
General premises for my work
From the moment we are born, we humans need relationships to thrive. We are resilient, but hurts in childhood are inevitable, as are good experiences. As adults, we often have a general sense of things from our past, and this sense tends to dominate how we feel about our childhoods and our current lives. And this sense also affects our adult experiences, our ways of connecting to others, even our brain chemistry and nervous system. These ways of seeing ourselves and our histories are changeable, as are the narratives of our lives. Though the events don’t change, our attention to them can. With the attention of a caring other, in open-hearted curiosity, our mind, body, and spirit can naturally shift toward more health and resilience.
Psychodynamic, relational, somatic, attachment, trauma, existential, multi-ethnic, person in environment, and strength are just some of the theories my practice comes from, all informed by neurobiological research. I will use a rich variety of personal and clinical skills and lived experience to serve my clients as they need.
As a clinical social worker and psychotherapist, my life experiences and training grant me the capacity to find connection and warmth with a wide range of people and experiences. To me, the many parts of the healing process — explored as I sit with you, as near or far as you need, sharing your excitement and joy as you begin to see shifts and change, or just laughing with you at many of life’s absurdities — are beautiful and profound. Nothing is more bittersweet and satisfying than properly ending with a client. They are going out in the world changed and more ready to live what is really true for them. I celebrate that with them, and I miss them too.
