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Grinnell College, BA in English Literature
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Antioch University, MA in Clinical Psychology with a specialization in Spiritual and Depth Psychology
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Clinical practicum in psychoanalytic psychotherapy at Valley Community Counseling Clinic
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Additional training in Synergetic Play Therapy
My Approach
My work is grounded in psychoanalytic theory, an approach that welcomes complexity, nuance, and conflict. Rather than pathologizing what you're experiencing, we stay curious about what your psyche is trying to communicate. Through close attention, dream analysis, and reflection, we will explore overwhelming feelings and deepen your understanding of yourself. As the grip of your past softens, you will find yourself with newfound agency, reclaiming choices that are empowering and supportive rather than restrictive and distressing.
As children, we discover who we are, learn to love, and experience pain through our relationships with others. It makes sense, then, that the deepest forms of healing and transformation also happen within a human relationship. I believe that therapy is an inherently relational experience; the relationship itself, and all that happens within it, is the catalyst for your transformation. Ultimately, therapeutic change is sparked by the alchemy between you and me. This is what we are creating together.
When I started training to become a therapist, I also began taking dance lessons and reading books about historical shipwrecks. In retrospect, I see how these two new interests -- partner dance and shipwrecks -- informed and reflected how I think as a therapist. Partner dance is a practice of intuitive and improvisational connection. Similarly, in our sessions, we are connected, spinning around each other through a conceptual space to think and feel together. And as the mutinies and shipwrecks from my books left people stranded and unimaginably desperate, they ultimately are stories of profound resiliency and recovery. That’s why I'm here, and that’s the voyage that we’ll embark on together.
My practice is fueled by warmth, empathy, and directness. I also believe that therapy needs room for playfulness, humor, and creativity so we can hold all that you contain with nuance, truth, and levity. There is no one-size-fits-all model, and we will work together to find what is most supportive and effective for you.