Welcome to a different space for exploration.
Trans* and Queer* Affirming Counseling
I adore working within and for the LGBTQIA2s+ community. We know how to radically reimagine ourselves and the relational bonds that tie us.
Count on me to always be ready to learn with you. I treasure the opportunity to deconstruct the ways we’ve been taught to put ourselves in boxes. Together, let’s explore new language, identify your values, and nurture the community spaces that make you feel your most empowered and connected as a queer person.
As a genderqueer, pansexual woman, I know that my queer experience doesn’t speak for everyone. However, I value deep curiosity as a lifelong learner and have worked within the queer and trans* communities for most of my time as a therapist. I am always thrilled to be witness to folks’ experiences with coming out, transitioning, and affectional (romantic/platonic) and sexual exploration.
Somatic, Trauma-informed Care
Our bodies hold immense emotion and sensation. Our emotions and sensations are best used as wise guides to facilitate our full exploration of the world around us. Trauma can disrupt the connection we feel with our inner world by actually changing the nature of how we interpret our bodily sensations and emotions. Trauma also disrupts how we feel emotions and belonging the relationships around us through attachment. I specialize in attachment-focused, somatic/body-based trauma work to accelerate healing and facilitate growth from the ground up. I also love helping folks to find coping skills and community support to make this deeper trauma work possible.
Neurodiversity-Affirming Approach
As a person with ADHD, I know that it has been difficult for me to unpack the shame I feel in so many life domains without a neurodiversity-affirming clinician. My hope and dream is to help you understand the inherent strengths within your differences while simultaneously adapting to the systems that may not have been built for you. You can frequently find me unmasking in session and I invite you to do the same. I believe the best space for healing is one that invites authenticity. I appreciate working with Autistic, ADHD, and neurodiverse folks of all forms. Special interests, info-dumping, and hilarious connections are valued here.
Chronic Illness and Disability in Therapy
People with chronic illness and disabled folx often find that individual therapy doesn’t necessarily do much to protect them from the very systems that hold them back from living a full life.
I try to take a slightly different approach to individual therapy with chronic pain, illness, and disability. While individual counseling is limited in its ability to dismantle systems of power rooted in ableism, we can also make therapy a space to come together to find solidarity, strength, and community in inter-abled and disabled relationships.
In session you can find me supporting access to accommodations and unpacking systems of power and oppression, as well as helping people process the grief that can accompany our changing bodies and minds.
Counseling For
Relational Issues
Perhaps my most meaningful therapeutic alliances have been with clients looking to explore how they related to their family, loved ones, partners, and friends. Our relational instruction manual, so to speak, is often one that needs updating for different seasons of life. I like to help clients explore the deeper emotions underlying relationship issues while also giving them tangible language and new skills in the moment to do things differently. Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Processing (AEDP) is an evidence-based model I use to foster my client’s relational growth in each and every session, regardless of the topic of the day.
Psychedelic Assisted Therapy
Imagine your brain and nervous system as a large expanse of interconnected grooves, like the salt flats you see to your left. The cracks and ridges of the salt and earth are developed over time. These trenches of thought pathways and nervous system response are visible, deep, and hard to the touch. Deep and heavy rain overhauls the earth, and creates upheaval and regeneration of the pattern of the flats. The rain, a symbol for the neuroplasticity created by psychedelics, allows the salt to resettle into new grooves as it dries.
In somatic trauma therapy, we often will encounter places in our bodily response and our neural pathways that are deeply entrenched. I work with ketamine and cannabis in session to help with “clearing the salt flats” and lowering defensive barriers to healing.
I have advanced training, supervision, and certification in Integrated Somatic Interventions for Psychedelic Assisted Psychotherapy from Beyond the Mind Psychotherapy. Additional information about this style of therapy is available upon request.
It is important to note that modern psychedelic-assisted therapeutic practices were created by indigenous communities that the mental health industrial complex does not recognize nor repay in its advertising of psychedelic assisted therapy as a healing modality. For additional reading or resources about the origins of psychedelic healing work, click here.
Humor and Creativity in Counseling
If you are looking for an ultra-serious, fairly formal clinician, I may not be the counselor that you are seeking. I tend to work best when humor and creativity take center stage in therapy. I will bring my authenticity and casual nature along with a keen, dogged professional focus on your goals. Humor and deep work play well together in therapy.
Finding Meaning in Grief and Loss
Instead of writing a few sentence message that could never capture the intensity of grief, I will offer a piece of art that has brought me comfort. Maybe my favorite message on grief and loss comes from the writer Kahlil Gibran in the book “The Prophet”, available here at Project Gutenberg.
On Joy and Sorrow
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
Recovery From Addiction and Abuse
Healing and recovery from addiction and abuse can be quite different, but they both involve empowerment, grief, and community.
Whether you have experienced substance addiction/abuse or relational/family/domestic abuse, I am here to support and empower you without judgment. Psychoeducation, skills work, and exploration of self can all play a role in recovery.
My approach is one of harm-reduction. Here are some questions I frequently ask myself:
How can I best support you in making your own unique choices in your relationships with alcohol or other drugs?
How can I support you in finding agency and connectedness with other people following abuse?