Therapy

For Individuals

RELATIONSHIP STRUGGLES

You might long for closeness but fear rejection and find yourself nervously strategizing about how to share your feelings or get your needs met. Alternatively, you might hold yourself at arms’ length from others, push away bad feelings, and never really feel known. Often these strategies help us feel more in control in the moment, but seem to push our partners away or upset them. Therapy can help you understand your particular attachment style better, honor your innate need for intimacy, safety and independence, and try new ways of behaving so that you can be close to others with less pain and confusion.

RELATIONAL TRAUMA

If you have a history of emotional, physical or sexual abuse by someone who was supposed to care for you, you almost certainly developed an amazing capacity for survival and self-protection. You are probably resilient in ways that would surprise even the people that know you the best. You likely also have parts of you that are still really hurting and hiding from view, which leaves you feeling disconnected or dis-integrated at times. Therapy can help you slowly, safely bring those hurting, lost parts back into being and safety with steady, compassionate attention and focus. 

OCCUPATIONAL TRAUMA & BURNOUT

If you are a journalist, public health professional or public interest attorney, you face a very particular set of daily challenges. You’re navigating complex systems and receiving relentless daily feedback from the public, all while holding yourself to the highest ethical and professional standards. You work under a level of scrutiny and pressure that most people don’t understand and this can take a toll on your body, your emotions and your relationships. Therapy provides a confidential, protected space in which you can put some of this burden down for a little while and process some of the intense feelings and situations inherent in your work. 

LIFE TRANSITIONS

If you’re going to college, getting married, having kids, retiring or taking a major professional leap, you may feel as if you are free-floating, untethered and unsure of who you are. You may feel immense feelings of joy and expectation about whatever life change you’re going through, but you may also be surprised to feel a sense of loss and sadness about what you’re leaving behind. Therapy is great for helping navigate these massive transitions and supporting you as you get to know yourself in this next phase. 

GRIEF AND LOSS

If you have loved another person deeply and been separated from them, either through death, divorce, estrangement or some other life transition, you know what a profound pain this is. You may be feeling that your life is empty and meaningless, that the world has gone on without you, or that getting close to others doesn’t seem worth it anymore. Whether the loss occurred recently or decades ago, you might find yourself living with deeply unresolved feelings. Therapy can help you recover by giving you space to process the feelings of sadness, anger and love, understand what this person meant to you, and integrate the loss into your head, heart and everyday life in a way that helps you move forward. 

DEPRESSION AND ANXIETY

If you are feeling low, unmotivated, sad, irritable, or anxious, you are probably not enjoying your life very much. Your experiences may be related to a clinical diagnosis of depression or anxiety, but could also be the result of certain coping strategies that have started to hurt and debilitate you. Self-criticism, judgment, perfectionism, people pleasing, and emotional overcontrol are ways that you may have learned to manage overwhelming feelings, but in the long run these strategies mute and confine you. Therapy is amazing for recognizing these coping patterns, understanding why they are there in the first place, and consciously exchanging them for more adaptive, self-affirming strategies.  

BODY ACCEPTANCE AND DISORDERED EATING / CYCLICAL DIETING

I provide a safe, evidence-informed space for my clients to heal from disordered eating and/or a conflicted relationship with their bodies. I specialize in treating people who are suffering from the insidious emotional, mental, and physical harms of intentional weight loss from an Intuitive Eating (IE) and Health at Every Size (HAES) approach. I espouse a weight- and food- neutral position (no foods are bad, all body sizes are good) and compassionately support all of my clients wherever they are in their recovery.

For Couples

I practice Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFTc), which focuses on calming conflict, deepening the emotional and sexual bond between partners, and establishing the type of trust, connection and love that can go the distance.

EMOTIONAL CONNECTION

Feeling misunderstood, blamed or unloved by your partner is one of the worst feelings there is. You may respond with anger (nagging, criticizing or attacking) or by shutting down and withdrawing. Either way, you end up alone and this is a terrible experience for both of you. Stopping this pattern and establishing a strong foundation of trust, understanding, closeness and connection is possible.

GIVING, RECEIVING AND NEGOTIATING

Are you resentful about all you do for your relationship? Do you wish your partner recognized how much you give and how much more you need? Do you find yourself complaining, withholding or retreating in resignation because you don’t know what else to do? Therapy can help you learn to confidently take credit for your hard work while making specific and understandable requests to your partner that set the stage for meaningful negotiation.  

ACCOUNTABILITY WITHOUT SHAME

It can be really hard to look at yourself and admit that you’ve hurt your partner, whether it’s a single instance or over time. It can be even harder to admit this to your partner for fear of an avalanche of “I told you so’s” or recrimination. One of my favorite things to do is help people hold themselves accountable without going to a shameful place that they feel they can’t get out of. In fact, being accountable and knowing how to truly apologize for the way we have hurt others is the antidote to shame and self-blame.

RECOVERY FROM AFFAIRS AND OTHER RELATIONSHIP TRAUMAS

When your partner violates your trust, it can feel as if you’ve lost everything. As if the rug’s been swept out from under you and the story of your past, present and future is completely unreliable. Couples often break up when affairs or other relationship traumas occur, but sometimes couples want to do the very hard work of healing and there’s no better place do to this than in couples therapy.  

EARLY RELATIONSHIP/PRE-MARITAL WORK

Want to tackle minor differences before they become big rifts? Want to assess whether you’re addressing important issues before making a long-term commitment? Early relationship couples therapy is one of the best ways to prevent cycles of conflict from grabbing hold of your relationship when times get tough. Identify your weak or “raw spots” now and plan for how you’ll respond when they get tested in the relationship.