I am trained as an educator teaching dialogue communication skills, emotional skills and social awareness for navigating a complex and diverse world. Becoming a therapist is my second career path, and this background has allowed me to engage with more of the depth of factors contributing to distress in people’s lives. I bring a wide-ranging approach to understanding the depth of harm and challenges in your life so that we can move towards thorough therapeutic solutions.
My therapy style foregrounds psychodynamic and person-centered modalities in an eclectic approach. Person-centered tools allow me to use the basics of authenticity, empathy and non-judgemental stances as I build rapport, while slowly highlighting introjects, conditions of worth, and widening windows of awareness and moving clients towards self-actualization. Psychodynamic tools allow me to forgoing shallow and short term results for deep awareness of the root of challenges, with which we can incorporate evidence-based practical methods like ACT, CBT and DBT in ways that move us towards gradually rewiring often life-long attachment patterns and maladaptive coping mechanisms contributing to presenting issues. When we understand how we were harmed we’re positioned to develop more thorough goals and pathways towards healing. I then eclectically incorporate other approaches as applicable.
First sessions provide an open exploration of the areas of challenge in your life, and aspects of your history both directly and indirectly setting the context. I will also ask about any prior experiences with therapy, your wants/needs to feel you can be vulnerable in this space together, and any preferences for the frequency and times when we will meet.
