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From our initial encounter, I do everything I can to help people to feel safe and accepted. I offer a free 15-minute initial phone consultation for clients to get a feel as to whether or not I am someone they would feel comfortable entrusting their treatment to. If clients decide to move forward with treatment, we then schedule our first session. These initial sessions include providing general information about my therapy practice as well as what to expect from treatment.
Tailored to YOUR Needs
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Additionally, I begin the process of gathering further information (as much as feels comfortable) that can help me guide our work together. I feel it is important to learn about the struggles that brought you to therapy, in addition to your strengths, your identity (religious/spiritual, racial, cultural, body image, gender, sexuality, familial, relational, medical) and your values As a team, we then develop treatment goals to ensure our work surrounds what YOU wish to achieve from therapy. I take care in spending time getting to know my clients in order to learn which approaches and interventions best fit the mental health need as well as the individual person. I will never ask clients to do anything that is not realistic or does not feel “right” for them, and if I unintentionally do, I fully welcome people to tell me so. Throughout treatment, we check-in with our therapy goals to ensure we are moving in a direction that feels comfortable, making adjustments as needed.
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I tend to look at everything through a trauma lens, as it is my belief that the majority of our difficult feelings, behaviors, and relationships stem from some kind of unmet needs or life-altering experiences at a younger age. The trainings that have shaped my career have been in psychodynamic/attachment theory, as well as trauma and its relationship with the body and brain, cue Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score as well as ARC (attachment, regulation, competency). I also find great success in utilizing the CBT modality, as well as all of its “cousin” approaches, including DBT. I am a big fan of movement, yoga, and mindfulness practices as well, if they are comfortable for clients.
Addressing Your Trauma
Further, I emphasize working with clients within their systems, including families, communities, and other aspects of their emotional/physiological lives – we do not live in a vacuum and therapy should reflect this!
Even with my training in a variety of evidence-based approaches, my most valued intervention in eliciting change is the process of building and fostering the therapeutic relationship. It is my belief that without a trusting relationship with your therapist, the good stuff does not happen!
Tour My Space
A Medicine Woman's Prayer
I will not rescue you,
For you are not powerless.
I will not fix you,
For you are not broken.
I will not heal you,
For I see you in your wholeness.
I will walk with you through the darkness,
As you remember your light.