My Approach

I am a somatic relational therapist. I work with people who have experienced relational harm at some point along their life span and who are experiencing current relational distress, whether that is difficulty connecting to their own experience or difficulty connecting with others. I have post-Master's training in three modalities for working with trauma. I am trained in EMDR, Somatic Experiencing and NeuroAffective Touch. All three are methods and means for renegotiating overwhelming experiences from the past in the present moment. The last modality incorporates the use of supportive touch as a means of navigating pre-verbal trauma, the earliest form of developmental trauma. My relational skills come from being mentored by my supervisor who is a Relational Gestalt therapist. Gestalt therapy is curious about what is happening now, what is the experience and what are we doing that helps or hinders.

In conjunction with my clinical training, I have extensive training in the self-cultivating arts of traditional Hatha yoga and meditation practices. Yoga is one avenue for reconnecting the body-mind and in this way is also a meditative practice. Both yoga and meditation have been shown to restructure the brain in a way that can lower emotional reactivity and aid in higher brain functions. By calming the emotional centers of the brain (limbic system) we gain greater access to the parts of the brain that aid in discernment, critial thinking, planning, organization and more (prefrontal cortex). 

I work with youth, adults, intimate partnerships and family systems. I work with people who have histories of sexual assault, molestation, physical, emotional and/or verbal abusive relationships. I work with early developmental trauma. I work with people who experience feelings of depression and anxiety. I work with people experiencing life changes (relocation, divorce, death) and with grief and loss. 

As we travel the path of life life will toss us any number of stressors and I work with folx who are ready to do the work to experience life anew.