In my training, I have worked with individuals, couples, and families from a wide range of ethnicities, genders, sexualities, ages, and socioeconomic backgrounds. Even within these differences, I’ve observed that all individuals have both a remarkable fragility and an incredible capacity for resilience. I encourage patients to make the most of this human condition by cultivating curiosity about their contradictions and complexities. This work involves engaging with past and present feelings that have not necessarily had a voice, or were perhaps located outside of one’s conscious awareness. These emotions, when left unacknowledged, can emerge in challenging ways and cloud one’s ability to see situations or relationships with insight and nuance. Confronting these difficult feelings allows someone to perceive the past more thoughtfully and envision different responses to conflict with more flexibility. I support people to integrate all of their emotional experiences into their sense of self so they can move through the world with more agency, freedom, and satisfaction.
I organize couples therapy as a close collaboration with partners in which everyone in the room investigates a relationship dynamic together. I take my role in this process seriously, which requires keeping this investigation going in a curious and open manner, despite the painful feelings that may come up. Although couples therapy can be difficult and overwhelming, I aim to help partners experience moments of revelation, catharsis, and even delight in the work.
My goal in family therapy is to help family members take better care of one another and experience closeness. While the intensity of pent-up feelings and long-held wounds that drive existing conflicts can be tough, these feelings need to be recognized, acknowledged, and expressed in an environment of trust and care. The process is often both frustrating and relieving, as the therapy allows family members to understand each other with a fresh perspective and reflect more imaginatively and insightfully about their own and each other’s inner lives.
Though there are distinct differences, I take a similar approach to therapy with children as I do with adults, leading with an understanding that even unhelpful behaviors and feelings have a purpose. Often this purpose is to protect an individual from what seems unbearable. I have compassion for and question the why behind a child’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Utilizing kids’ natural earnestness and creativity, play can be a particularly meaningful tool to allow emotions to be expressed that a child may not otherwise be able to communicate. Once there is an appreciation for the logic and feeling behind actions, I help kids—and their parents—make sense of how pain emerges and discover healthier paths forward.