FAQ

Therapy is an agent for change. For most, it's about reducing pain. But in reducing pain, we also begin to feel more free. Think of it like a backpack filled with heavy rocks. The more rocks that you take out and drop to the ground, the lighter you will feel and the more free you will be to live the life that excites you.

Ask yourself right now, how would your life change if you felt light and free?

Take a moment to imagine it, visualize it.

My passion is helping people make that happen!

In short— positive change.

Depending on your present situation and your reasons for seeking help, there are many benefits to therapy. If you are struggling, therapy can help you better manage your symptoms, outbreaks, and triggers. You will increase your coping skills and open your eyes to new ways of dealing with situations that you may not have been aware of before.

You will learn problem-solving skills, be provided support, and work through life changes. There is also incredible value in just being heard. The need to be heard, to express ourselves and be understood and accepted, is one of the few psychological needs all humans have.

The therapy process will allow you to see your circumstances as a personal growth opportunity instead of a burden or obstacle.

A crucial ingredient to growth is learning to accept ourselves for who we are and where we are at, learning to be as gentle with ourselves as we would a child learning how to walk. So much of our pain and suffering comes from the judgments we have about ourselves, the stories we tell ourselves ABOUT ourselves. I come from a mindfulness background and I believe in validating our thoughts and feelings, and then working from there. "What would love do right now?" "What would compassion do right now?"

I strongly believe in meeting each person where they are at. Creating a space for each person to open up and be him or herself is a crucial component in therapy. I also come from a strengths-based perspective. How often have you focused on what you are doing wrong or what you aren’t doing right? What would happen if you were able to see yourself in a new light, making a shift towards believing in yourself and what you ARE doing well, what you CAN do? In my experience, that’s where much of the magic happens.

As someone who is very client-first and believes in autonomy, I customize my treatment approach based on the unique needs and goals of my clients. Depending on what works best for you, we may utilize Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Mindfulness (stress reduction), EMDR Therapy (trauma work), Motivational Interviewing (the gentle process of setting and achieving goals) and Gottman Method (for couples)—or any combination of these. For more information on these therapeutic approaches, click on the “Therapy Styles” question further below as well as check out my blog page which has an entry for each approach.

Individual therapy: Together we will work one-on-one to discuss the personal goals you would like to achieve in therapy. If you are unsure of your specific goals but you just know you want to feel better, we will work together to establish and meet those goals. There are many avenues available to us to make that happen (which you can read more about further below and in the blog section of this site).

Couples Therapy: For those who would like to improve their relationship with their partner, couples therapy is a great way to do so. I’ve worked with couples who were close to separating and found their way back to each other, as well as those who just want to work through current or long-term issues. I use the famed Gottman Method to help couples improve their friendship and enhance their fondness and admiration for one another, to learn how to manage their conflicts, and to create a sense of shared meaning and purpose both within the relationship and in life.

I work with clients with all sorts of concerns and issues, but my specialties are:

Stress & Anxiety Management: Stress and Anxiety can feel like they have control over you — your mind races, your heart beats fast, and your fight or flight mechanism kicks in. Our work together will help you feel more in control of your life and begin to take away anxiety’s power over you. Together we will work to understand stress and anxiety’s origins, build skills for coping, and free yourself from its control.

Depression: Depression is the opposite of vitality, disempowering you and leaving you struggling to participate in life. Our sessions will focus on understanding depression, how it debilitates, and the ways it causes us to judge ourselves for being depressed. Through therapy you’ll begin to see the world, your thoughts, and yourself in a new way.

Chronic Illness & Pain: As a chronic illness sufferer, I have a special connection to the experience of grief, negative belief, and the brokenness one can feel. Through radical acceptance we can change our relationship to our health and our bodies and succeed in spite of our limitations. Through our therapeutic relationship you can find a balanced life within your chronic illness and pain.

Trauma: I define trauma as any painful past experience that still has an effect on you today. In addition, there are traumatic events that pose a greater threat to an individual’s safety. These types of traumas can be especially difficult to process and can negatively affect your sense of self, others, and the world around you.

I am a certified EMDR Therapist and have witnessed firsthand this very powerful and effective technique to help individuals process their traumas, letting the brain do most of the work. To learn more about how trauma can affect a person and how EMDR Therapy works, please keep reading below and check out the blog page.

Couples Counseling: I work with couples who are at various points of distress in their relationship. You could either be early in your time together but want to improve your communication skills or you are contemplating breaking up or getting divorced and don’t know where to turn. The renowned Gottman Method is an evidence-based couples counseling approach that has achieved incredible success in helping couples improve their relationships, which in turn greatly reduces stress levels in one’s life and improves well-being (one study showed that men who kissed their wives as they left for work lived 5 years longer than men who didn’t!).

While I tailor my approach to each individual’s needs, there are 5 therapy styles (or modalities) I use most often. Each approach also has a more detailed blog post that you can read by clicking on the links in each description. I primarily utilize the following:

Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT): CBT is a cognitive-based, rational approach to exploring the relationship between your thoughts and behaviors to your emotions and moods. How we think and behave affects how we feel. In turn, how we feel, affects how we think and act. All 3 are interconnected: thought (perception), feelings, behavior.

However, we cannot change our feelings at the feelings level (try telling your feeling of anxiety or stress to go away and see if that changes anything). But we can improve or change our emotions by examining and modifying our thoughts to be more flexible, realistic, and positive. We can also look at how our behaviors are negatively affecting our mood as well and utilize behavioral experiments or the many coping strategies I can teach you to help you feel better and more hopeful. CBT, in effect, helps you learn to be your own therapist.

Mindfulness: Mindfulness is a term that has become much more popular in recent years. As such, there are many different definitions for mindfulness. One that I like and use often is, “Keeping your attention alive in the present moment without attachment or aversion.” This means that we are connecting to our body — our breath, our 5 senses — which is always in the present moment. The mind can be a time traveler jumping into the future, potentially creating worry and anxiety, or dwelling on the past often leading to shame, guilt, and regret.

Attachment means to cling to a thought, perspective, expectation, or a way of doing things, and aversion is a strong dislike of what is uncomfortable or painful. In either case, it means we are avoiding what is in the here and now, further perpetuating our pain. Mindfulness is both a mindset as well as a set of practices we can learn to help decrease pain and suffering in our lives and cultivate a sense of calm and ease. I will show you how.

EMDR Therapy: Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (that’s a mouthful, so you see why it’s called EMDR) is a powerful trauma-based therapy technique that helps the nervous system —where past trauma still resides — reprocess past painful experiences (that is, to store it in long-term memory so that it does not have the same emotional and physical effect on an individual).

EMDR Therapy can be used for many different kinds of trauma be it from sexual or physical abuse, chronic illness, an accident, as well as less life-threatening, but still painful, past experiences that still have a negative effect on you today. Part of the strength of EMDR is not only its effectiveness, but its range of application.

Motivational Interviewing (MI): Motivational Interviewing is a client-centered approach to helping individuals make positive changes in their lives through resolving ambivalence. What does this mean? The main reason we often feel stuck when wanting to make changes in our lives is because we are actually being pulled in at least two different directions between our desire to make a change and the pull of staying with what is comfortable, known, or predictable, even if it’s also painful. After all, if we weren’t getting some benefit from our current actions, why would we still be doing it? There’s always a reason and it’s important to explore and honor that as well.

So, MI is a process whereby you and I would examine what changes you want to see as well as identify what might be causing you to feel stuck and tapping into your innate wisdom and experiences to come up with solutions to work through this ambivalence, in the smallest of steps if that’s what you need, so that you can start to see real progress.

Gottman Method for Couples Counseling: The Gottman Method is an evidence-based couples counseling approach that uses the Sound Relationship House Theory to conceptualize what makes relationships work as well as where they may struggle and need to be smoothed out.

At its core, it's about 3 components: building/enriching friendship (which in turn improves positive feelings a couple has towards one another), learning to manage conflict, and creating shared meaning within the relationship.

Utilizing the Gottman Method, I will help you identify the areas in which your relationship may feel stuck and employ specific interventions that teach you the skills so that you and your partner can learn how to better manage disagreements, strengthen your connection and intimacy, enhance your fondness, and admiration for one another, and increase empathy and understanding within the relationship.

First and foremost, the benefits of virtual therapy start with convenience. Meeting via video means you can cut out the time and stress of commuting to and from the therapy office.

Virtual therapy can even create a sense of closeness between you and your therapist because it gives you the opportunity to share your home/space with your therapist. It allows you to share with them meaningful things in your room, photographs, or artwork on your wall.

Virtual therapy allows for consistency. If you and your therapist can meet over video, there is flexibility to meet with your therapist more regularly. For example, if you’re out of town, feeling sick, or working from home, you don’t necessarily have to miss a session.

With virtual therapy you can create a safe and comfortable therapy space based on your needs. This means you get to decide where you are and how you set up your area—that way it feels unique to your needs.