How I Think About Therapy

My work as a psychotherapist begins with how I think about emotional life and development — and how experiences across the lifespan shape how we, as individuals, relate to ourselves and others.

While bodily and emotional symptoms are worthy of attention on their own, it is helpful to learn about the context that they appear. Depression, anxiety, relational difficulties and parenting stressors, are meaningful responses to lived experiences; they are signals that something important has been carried, adapted to or left unspoken.

Therapy offers a space to pause, wonder and find other meanings to these sorts of experiences together. When emotional life has time to sit and be without judgement, development often is freed up to start moving again.

Therapy for Adolescents and Parents

Children and adolescents experience emotions differently from adults. Distress can arise in connection with positive and negative feelings. Their distress tends to be shown through their behavior, moodiness, and generally functioning and can reflect developmental strain more than intentional difficulty or opposition.

My work with adolescents is grounded in careful attention to developmental stage, emotional expression, and relational context. I also collaborate closely with parents, to talk, think and understand their child’s experience while supporting them to find more calm, clarity and confidence.

Having some parent consultations can be especially helpful during periods of changes, transition, uncertainty, or concern about a child’s emotional well-being.

Therapy for Adults

Adults often start therapy with feelings of being depleted, anxious, disconnected, or bothered by a pattern that no longer fits them. Many adults can be functioning outwardly yet quietly struggling inside.

One thing that often happens in adult therapy is a process of discovering new or unthought, connections about oneself.  There may be a growing of understanding about how emotional weight accumulated over time, how certain relationships and roles shaped ones inner life, and the development of new ways of relating to themselves and others.

Qualifications and Experience

My professional psychotherapy education began in the art and science of Marriage and Family Therapy (MFT) which lead to a Master’s degree in Clinical Psychology. Licensed since 2000, my clinical experience includes adults, couples, families, teens, children and parents. I provided psychotherapy Healthcare clinic for women with unspecified pelvic pain. I co-created and facilitated an Partial Hospitalization and Intensive Outpatient Program that provided individual and group therapy for individuals, 18-years up. In 2015 I qualified as a psychoanalyst. This involved an comprehensive advanced training encompassing theory, development, and clinical work intensives. I am a consulting and personal training analyst, at SFCP   where I am on faculty.