Services
I provide psychotherapy sessions to both individuals and couples.
Individual Therapy
As an individual, you may be experiencing a wide range of difficult symptoms in the body and mind that make you wonder, “What’s wrong with me?” “Why does this keep happening?” and “Why can’t I be genuinely happy?” You may feel gripped by past traumas or experiences that affect your ability to function optimally, to rise, and become your fullest you.
For deep, lasting healing to occur, the questions are not, “Why are these symptoms happening to me?” and “How can I cover them up and make them go away as quickly as possible?” Rather, the important questions become, “What are these symptoms trying to say about a part of me that is begging to be seen and known by the rest of me?” “What valuable material can be unearthed from them?” and “What deeper meaning can be made from them?”
By pursuing answers to these important (albeit difficult) questions, within the context of a safe therapeutic relationship, you’ll start to find that you no longer feel trapped. You’ll find that your past traumas and current symptoms become sources of strength, power, and creativity. They serve as openings through which transformations occur and your fullest potential can be reached as a human being. They are the tunnels through which light is found in the darkness.
Relationship issues
As an individual, you not only need relationships, but you deserve to be happy in them. Many people present to individual psychotherapy because they are lonely, hurt, or overall dissatisfied in their relationships with others. In individual therapy, we’ll work to understand what old patterns may be playing out in your current relationships. Over time, you’ll feel emboldened to relinquish these old patterns and explore new, more satisfying types of relationships and ways of relating to others.
Spirituality
I often work with people who already have a spiritual base or are interested in cultivating one. Spirituality manifests differently for different people. It may come in the form of a particular religious belief, different spiritual or meditative practices, a general connection to God or Source, or even work with different plant medicines. Psychotherapy can expand your spiritual sense in new and exciting ways; inversely, your unique connection to Source can add to the richness and depth of psychotherapeutic understanding and healing.
Trauma and Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP)
I have training in Diana Fosha’s AEDP. AEDP is a healing-oriented, emotion-focused, attachment and transformation-based model. Using the AEDP approach, we’ll use the therapeutic relationship to undo your aloneness with unbearable emotions stemming from traumatic experiences in your life. We’ll also use the safety and security of our relationship to facilitate the emergence of your natural growth and healing processes. This approach privileges the positive and capitalizes on your innate capacity to flourish and bloom!
Couples therapy
As a person in a relationship, you may find yourself feeling both distant from, and misunderstood by, your partner. You may find yourselves fighting for reasons unknown, yet in predictable ways.
In Couples therapy, you’ll begin to discover that you can find openness, safety, and security with your partner. You’ll start to experience feeling seen and known by them in ways unimaginable given your current patterns, yet in ways deeply yearned for. You’ll begin to grow as individuals, yet alongside one another, within the context of a growing secure attachment.
Emotionally Focused Therapy for Couples (EFT)
I have training in Sue Johnson’s EFT model. Using the EFT framework, we’ll work to de-escalate your negative interaction cycles, understand what you both truly need and feel inside, and then work to communicate those needs and feelings in ways that bring openness and safety to your relationship, and enhance your emotional bond.
Certificate from the William Alanson White Institute in The Couples Therapy Training and Education Program (CTTEP)
In CTTEP, I learned to approach couple’s sessions from a psychoanalytic and systemic point of view and integrate these perspectives into our sessions. For instance, using these approaches, we’ll work to understand how unresolved issues across generations in your families impact your current relationship patterns. We’ll work to break these intergenerational traps and practice new, more authentic and liberating ways of being together.
Infidelity
Couples often present to couple’s therapy to work through the pain of infidelity—often one of the deepest wounds to any relationship. During our sessions, we’ll work to understand what was happening in the relationship that ultimately led to the affair. You’ll have the opportunity to share openly with one another, and to really hear and understand each other. When the wounded person feels truly heard and felt by his/her/their partner, then healing ensues. There is hope that safety, closeness, and trust can be re-established in your relationship.
Sex therapy
Sexual issues in a relationship are often determined by multiple factors that can be successfully worked through. I take an emotion-focused, relational/psychoanalytic, and behavioral approach to sex therapy sessions. Often sexual dissatisfaction stems from emotional disconnection. As you start to take more emotional risks, to be vulnerable and emotionally responsive to one another, you’ll find that your sex life becomes more fulfilling. We’ll also explore how your unique upbringings led you to develop certain sexual stories that you carry with you into your relationship. We’ll work to understand these stories and transform them in such a way that you can start to experience sexual satisfaction again. I may also incorporate at-home behavioral exercises, such as mindfulness practices and sensate-focused exercises, into our work.