Meaningful, mindful, existential, attachment-based support

Individuals:

If you resonate with this, maybe I would be a good fit for you! I tend to work with people on a journey to value their own experience. Maybe you feel sensitive but overwhelmed by your emotions, desirous of connection but overwhelmed by your attachment tendencies. Maybe you people-please, avoid, or feel overwhelmed by your interpersonal relationships. Maybe you don’t buy that you should value your own needs, especially if they conflict with others’. Maybe you’re just trying to understand what your feelings are, where your anxiety comes from, or how to feel more secure. I work with a lot of people with complex/Attachment trauma, meaning that the trauma they’ve experienced may be woven into the fabric of their relationships, upbringing and show up in their nervous system and attachment with self and others. Trauma isn’t just what happened to you, it’s how your nervous system is still responding and playing out the scripts it learned when young. I am passionate about working with people of all sexualities and gender identities, and have a lot of experience and love of working with people who are queer, straight, poly and trans.

Couples and Partners:

Whether you’re struggling with communication, sexuality, or undergoing a big transition like opening up, trauma responses arise. We hold within us long-held patterns of self protection and learning to manage boundaries—how “I” meets “we”. We form hidden expectations from early life. Sometimes how we react surprises us in relationship. I seek to help unpack these wounds, uncover emotional associations and work with partners to bridge each person’s own experience in order to facilitate stronger and healthier communication. I will also utilize creative ways of meeting each partner’s needs, such as sporadically meeting with partners as individuals to explore experiences of the process and come back together to integrate what that may have been brought up.

About me:

I first started coming to therapy after the sudden loss of my father as a child. I have always felt intensely, trying to understand how we live in a world where there is so much loss and pain. I have felt an intuitive draw to regulate myself, which came about from years of feeling dysregulated—hard-to-understand anxiety, physical discomfort and somatic symptoms, existential dread and worry that has plagued me. Through experiencing the loss of loved ones and multiple pregnancies, I’ve grappled with my world existentially and spiritually, and worked hard to feel more secure in my body and at ease with the painful, uncontrollable parts of life. Through this grappling I have also found beauty. I believe we each have to find our own reason for living. The meaning is very much what we make of things. Yet, there can be so many layers to sift through.

Through the healing space of caring therapists, body workers, psychedelic experiences and relationships, I’ve found more nurturance for myself and more dedication to my own self. What I once thought selfish, I now try to cultivate as a form of self worth. I am very much still in process, as I believe we all are. I bring to my therapeutic relationships both my empathy and my humility and my care for others’ difficult experiences. I am a fellow traveler.

One thing I want my clients to know about me is that I am not an expert on anyone else’s experience. I think the most empowering thing is to find the choices that feel true to each of us, and we all deserve to be affirmed and cared for as we do the difficult work of peeling back the layers, understanding our feelings, needs and desires, and becoming more connected to ourselves, others, and to life itself.

Outside of my practice, I am a parent and a partner. I love to hike, cook, camp, adventure and embrace the messy, chaos, but also beauty of being human in the world today.