History
Originally from Chicago, I've worked in a variety of settings: a social service center, with at-risk and homeless persons; residential treatment with severely abused and neglected adolescents; residential treatment with adults living with HIV and AIDS; an inpatient psych facility, offering individual, family, and group therapy (as well as case management) to adolescents, adults, and older adults; and, in community mental health, offering substance use treatment (both abstinence-focused and harm reduction-based) to the LGBTQ community in individual and group therapy. I've been in independent practice since 2009. In 2013, I made the transition to full-time solo practice. I put down roots in Seattle in March 2016, and currently offer ongoing individual therapy on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. Fridays and Saturdays are devoted to working with more highly resourced clients in a brief intensive format that allows for deeper work in a concentrated manner.
Specialties
The people I serve often have struggled for years to resolve chronic/persistent problems intrude into life at the most frustrating times. They grew tired of therapies that focus only on 'managing' or suppressing their problems--that appealed only to their 'thinking' brain, or that focused on 'what happened this week'. It either didn't work or didn't last. Maybe that's you, too. I use a combination of therapies with my clients: EMDR therapy: I am an Approved Consultant and Certified in EMDR therapy, and have a good lot of experience using it to treat both single-episode trauma and complex emotional wounding. I have advanced training in treating early (pre-age 3) trauma and neglect, and addiction and compulsion-related trauma. Sensorimotor Psychotherapy: A really powerful approach that focuses on how the body interacts with trauma. I use it for either 'turning up' or 'turning down' the volume of the body's felt sense, and it's also great for helping to digest wounding when a slower approach than EMDR therapy is needed. Hypnosis: I have completed Intermediate training through ASCH, and tend to integrate it with other therapies rather than use it as a 'stand-alone' approach. Ego State Therapy: 'There's a part of me that wants this, and a part of me that wants that'. Well, sometimes the parts of us don't play nice with one another, and this is a wonderful approach to increase healthy communication within the self. I use it often, because it helps.