I am a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) based in San Francisco, California, and working with clients statewide via Telehealth. I enjoy working with individual adults and specialize in treating anxiety, depression, stress and relational challenges, using an eclectic approach of Relational Life Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and Solutions-Focused Therapy to help my clients make progress and start feeling better.
My approach to therapy is rooted in a client-centered and holistic understanding of every client and their presenting concerns. My therapeutic style is influenced by positivity, hope, meeting folks where they are and guiding them to a place of knowing, liking and trusting themselves. My overarching goal is to help clients thrive and to connect to a deeper sense of joy and purpose.
I work collaboratively and from a full-respect model with each client. In sessions with clients I offer a presence of unconditional positive regard that is enriched by my life and work experiences of having lived and worked in a wide range of cultural contexts. I am trained in a variety of different modalities. Here are some of the most influential ones: Relational Life Therapy, Emotionally Focused Therapy, Safe and Sound Protocol (Polyvagal Theory), Diabolical Behavioral Therapy, Structural Family Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and many more.
One of the best ways to describe our first session is as a time to get to know each other. We will begin with an emotional check-in and a mindful moment to regulate your nervous system, because a regulated autonomic nervous system is flexible, safe and open to connection, creative possibility, and problem-solving.
We will then spend a good chunk of our time talking about what brings you into therapy, your symptoms and challenges, your life circumstances, and how your mental health challenges are impacting your life and relationships. I will ask you a series of holistic questions about your mental/emotional/spiritual health, your intimate relationships, your work/school and career, and your physical health. This is what we, in shrink-talk, call a biopsychosocial assessment, meaning all of your symptoms and all the ways your environment, both internal and external, impacts how you interact with yourself and others. In this conversation I am assessing how you feel about yourself and the world around you. I am curious about your unique presentation, and you and I will conclude our first meeting by defining a series of goals to work on in therapy.
