My approach is patient-centered, integrative, psychodynamically informed. This means that I incorporate a number of therapeutic modalities (psychodynamic, interpersonal, CBT, DBT, mindfulness) to best tailor treatment to the individual with whom I am working. I approach therapy with flexibility, openness, and empathy. I also work to provide a nurturing environment to promote change and healing, enhance individuals’ strengths, and meet specific and personal needs.
I believe that the way in which humans develop, feel, act, and think is based on myriad of factors. I work with the understanding that people are only partially aware of their experiences. An essential aim of treatment is to enhance greater self-awareness by slowly removing barriers to self-knowledge and understanding. Most importantly, I help enable individuals to become curious and interested in the nuanced, and often difficult, details of their experiences both past and present. Therapy can help illuminate aspects of ourselves that we don't know about. It is often through a greater understanding of one’s history and different parts of oneself that individuals can gain symptom reduction and overall change.
One of the most important parts of my work is to create a safe and confidential environment for my patients to engage actively in the work of better understanding themselves and their ways of being in the world. An essential element of the therapeutic process and the ultimate success of therapy is based on the therapeutic relationship. I believe that finding a therapist with whom you feel connected and compatible is essential.
As a clinical psychologist, I maintain a relational perspective and practice. This means that I work to utilize the relationship that I develop with my patients as a tool to help better understand the struggles that they might experience with others. The therapeutic relationship can act as a microcosm of relationships in the outside world and can offer opportunities to process and understand patterns of interactions with others. It can also be utilized to practice new ways of interacting.
In order to address and reduce specific symptoms, I provide tools and techniques to help individuals find relief and to engage differently in the world. I work carefully with my patients to improve their daily functioning using research-supported interventions that have been proven to effectively help change feelings, thoughts, and behaviors.
I also believe that it is essential to work to identify and change ineffective patterns of coping. These ways of managing difficult feelings often develop in childhood as adaptive and necessary ways to manage suffering and survive within family frameworks. As individuals grow into adults, patterns of behavior become more engrained over time. However, these patterns often stop being as useful and instead can exacerbate emotional pain and hinder or limit one’s range of experience and satisfaction or ability to function adequately within other areas of life. I work to help my patients find other patterns to choose from so that they have more options and subsequently, more freedom. Ultimately, therapy can help you explore what works and what doesn’t work for you in your life. I can help you examine the patterns you have created for yourself, and in a compassionate way, learn how to identify them and change them, when needed.
