SERVICES

My work is influenced by Somatic Psychology , Emotionally Focussed Couple Therapy (EFT) , Mindfulness , Attachment Theory , and Psychodynamic approaches. My style is collaborative, inclusive, interactive, and non-shaming. I work with individuals and couples using a trauma informed lens. I welcome folks of all ages, races, ethnicities, cultural backgrounds and sexual/gender identities.

Individual Therapy

My goal with clients is to cultivate an environment where we co-create a relationship that feels comfortable, collaborative and supportive. This serves as a foundation from which you share your story with me and we identify how your unique history has shaped how you relate to others. I offer reflection and inquiry to help strengthen your ability to identify emotions and behavioral patterns so you develop a deeper understanding of yourself and your needs. As you reach greater self-insight, we work together to help you cultivate strategies that help you help yourself. Getting to know yourself is not an easy endeavor, but with an empathic and calm presence, I walk alongside you, advocate for you, and nurture the unfolding process as you realize your innate inner wisdom and capacity to heal. Through understanding and accepting yourself, you can awaken your inner aliveness while improving and deepening your relationship with yourself and others.

Together We Can Work On

Relationship issues, intimacy and communication
Anger, anxiety, inner critic, coping skills and shame
Childhood and emotional trauma
Life transitions, feeling stagnant, corporate burnout
Co-dependency, recovery from dysfunctional family systems
Identity development, issues related to multiracial and multicultural identity
Increase self-awareness, flexibility, self-empowerment

Couples Therapy

Most people long for connection, security, and acceptance in romantic relationships. But we often end up feeling emotionally disconnected, hopeless and frustrated. In our work together, we’ll build tools to reduce conflict, identify patterns that aren’t working for you as a couple, find the root causes of those dynamics, discover unexpressed emotions that are masked by defensive behavior, and find new solutions to old problems. Applying new tools and awareness, together we create new patterns that help deepen emotional bonds. Disagreements are inevitable in relationships, but how you as a couple learn to resolve differences and re-connect, rather than disconnect, is the difference between an unsatisfying and fulfilling relationship.

Together We Can Work On

De-escalation and conflict resolution
Withdrawing behavior, criticism and abandonment issues
Bridge gaps in different communication styles
Rediscover connection
Trust and intimacy
Expand your understanding of yourself and your partner in relationship
Vision and values

Somatic psychology is a form of Psychotherapy that focuses on somatic experience, and the embodied self, including therapeutic and holistic approaches to body. Body psychotherapy is a general branch of this subject, while somatherapy, eco-somatics and dance therapy, for example, are specific branches of the subject. Somatic psychology is a framework that seeks to bridge the mind-body dichotomy.

Pierre Janet can perhaps be considered the first somatic psychologist due to his extensive psychotherapeutic studies and writings with significant reference to the body (some of which pre-date Freud). It is only gradually that the body entered into the realm of available techniques that could be used in a psychodynamic frame, following the explorations of Sándor Ferenczi and his friend Georg Groddeck, then Otto Fenichel and his friend Wilhelm Reich. Wilhelm Reich is the first who tried to develop a clear psychodynamic approach that included the body, but he soon found out that it could not be done.[1][2] He then developed his own way of combining body and mind and the somatic regulators that connect these two dimensions.[3] Reich was a significant influence in the founding of body psychotherapy (or somatic psychology as it is often known in the USA and Australia) – though he called his early work “character analysis”[4] and “character-analytic vegetotherapy”). Several types of body-oriented psychotherapies trace their origins back to Reich, though there have been many subsequent developments and other influences on body psychotherapy and somatic psychology is of particular interest in trauma work.[5][6]

EFT began in the mid-1980s as an approach to helping couples. EFT was originally formulated and tested by Sue Johnson and Les Greenberg in 1985,[8] and the first manual for emotionally focused couples therapy was published in 1988.[9] To develop the approach, Johnson and Greenberg began reviewing videos of sessions of couples therapy to identify, through observation and task analysis, the elements that lead to positive change. They were influenced in their observations by the humanistic experiential psychotherapies of Carl Rogers and Fritz Perls, both of whom valued (in different ways) present-moment emotional experience for its power to create meaning and guide behavior.[10] Johnson and Greenberg saw the need to combine experiential therapy with the systems theoretical view that meaning-making and behavior cannot be considered outside of the whole situation in which they occur.[10] In this “experiential–systemic” approach to couples therapy, as in other approaches to systemic therapy, the problem is viewed as belonging not to one partner, but rather to the cyclical reinforcing patterns of interactions between partners.[11] Emotion is viewed not only as a within-individual phenomena, but also as part of the whole system that organizes the interactions between partners.[12] In 1986, Greenberg chose “to refocus his efforts on developing and studying an experiential approach to individual therapy”.[13] Greenberg and colleagues shifted their attention away from couples therapy toward individual psychotherapy.[14] They attended to emotional experiencing and its role in individual self-organization. Building on the experiential theories of Rogers and Perls and others such as Eugene Gendlin, as well as on their own extensive work on information processing and the adaptive role of emotion in human functioning, Greenberg, Rice & Elliott (1993) created a treatment manual with numerous clearly outlined principles for what they called a process-experiential approach to psychological change. Elliott et al. (2004) and Goldman & Greenberg (2015) have further expanded the process-experiential approach, with detailed manuals of specific methods of therapeutic intervention. Goldman & Greenberg (2015) presents case formulation maps for this approach. Johnson continued to develop EFT for couples, integrating attachment theory with systemic and humanistic approaches,[15] and explicitly expanding attachment theory’s understanding of love relationships.[16] Johnson’s model retained the original three stages and nine steps and two sets of interventions that aim to reshape the attachment bond: one set of interventions to track and restructure patterns of interaction and one to access and reprocess emotion (see § Stages and steps below).[17] Johnson’s goal is the creation of positive cycles of interpersonal interaction wherein individuals are able to ask for and offer comfort and support to safe others, facilitating interpersonal emotion regulation.[18] Greenberg & Goldman (2008) developed a variation of EFT for couples that contains some elements from Greenberg and Johnson’s original formulation but adds several steps and stages. Greenberg and Goldman posit three motivational dimensions—(1) attachment, (2) identity or power, and (3) attraction or liking—that impact emotion regulation in intimate relationships.[19]

Mindfulness is the psychological process of bringing one’s attention to experiences occurring in the present moment, [1][2][3] which can be developed through the practice of meditation and other training.[2][4][5] The term “mindfulness” correlates with the Pali term sati,[6] which is a significant element of Buddhist traditions.[7][8] In Buddhist teachings, mindfulness is utilized to develop self-knowledge and wisdom that gradually lead to what is described as enlightenment or the complete freedom from suffering.[7] The recent[when?] popularity of mindfulness in the modern context is generally considered to have been initiated by Jon Kabat-Zinn.[9][10]

Studies have shown that rumination and worry contribute to mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety,[11][3] and that mindfulness-based interventions are effective in the reduction of both rumination and worry.[11][12]

Clinical psychology and psychiatry since the 1970s have developed a number of therapeutic applications based on mindfulness for helping people who are experiencing a variety of psychological conditions.[10] For example, mindfulness practice is being employed to reduce depression symptoms,[13][14][15] to reduce stress,[14][16][17] anxiety,[13][14][17] and in the treatment of drug addiction.[18][19][20] The practice of mindfulness also appears to provide numerous therapeutic benefits to people with psychosis,[21][22] and may also be a preventive strategy to halt the development of mental health problems.[23]

Clinical studies have documented both physical and mental health benefits of mindfulness in different patient categories as well as in healthy adults and children.[3][24][25] Programs based on Kabat-Zinn’s and similar models have been widely adopted in schools, prisons, hospitals, veterans’ centers, and other environments, and mindfulness programs have been applied for additional outcomes such as for healthy aging, weight management, athletic performance, for children with special needs, and as an intervention during the perinatal period. The necessity for more high-quality research in this field has also been identified – such as the need for more randomized controlled studies, for providing more methodological details in reported studies and for the use of larger sample sizes.

Psychodynamics, also known as psychodynamic psychology, in its broadest sense, is an approach to psychology that emphasizes systematic study of the psychological forces that underlie human behavior, feelings, and emotions and how they might relate to early experience. It is especially interested in the dynamic relations between conscious motivation and unconscious motivation.[1] The term psychodynamics is also used by some to refer specifically to the psychoanalytical approach developed by Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) and his followers. Freud was inspired by the theory of thermodynamics and used the term psychodynamics to describe the processes of the mind as flows of psychological energy (libido or psi) in an organically complex brain.[2] There are 4 different schools of thought regarding psychological treatment: Psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioral, biological, and humanistic treatment. In the treatment of psychological distress, psychodynamic psychotherapy tends to be a less intensive, once- or twice-weekly modality than the classical Freudian psychoanalysis treatment of 3-5 sessions per week. Psychodynamic therapies depend upon a theory of inner conflict, wherein repressed behaviours and emotions surface into the patient’s consciousness; generally, one’s conflict is subconscious.[3]