Specialty Areas

LGBTQIA Issues, Gender, and Sexuality

Therapy offices have historically felt unsafe for many people with diverse gender and sexuality identities. I am passionate about changing this so queer-identified clients feel welcome in therapy. I work from a queer-affirming perspective with an emphasis on building safety and trust. My experience includes working with people as they go through gender-affirming transitions, issues related to queer relationships and family, minority stress and oppression, and challenges related to balancing sexuality and spiritual/religious identities, as well as intersectional queer identity development more broadly.

Relationships and Loneliness

As a relational cultural therapist, I view people’s sense of connection and fulfillment in relationships as an important measure of health and well-being. Acknowledging our loneliness or dissatisfaction in relationships can be terrifying, but it often catalyzes the courageous steps we must take to become more vulnerable and proactive in getting our needs met in relationships. Therapy can be an ideal place to explore how we are in our relationships and how we came to be that way. From there we can learn what is working in our relationships and what is not and, eventually, what it is that we want in those relationships.

Eating Concerns and Body Shame

I work from a Health at Every Size, or HAES, approach in providing support for clients working to find peace with their body and food. HAES encourages us to trust our body by listening to hunger and fullness cues, seek joy and moderation in physical activity, celebrate body diversity, and reject diet culture, sizeism, and the thin ideal. I also incorporate intuitive eating techniques to assist with enhancing trust in one’s body as well as emotion-focused, self-compassion, and mindfulness based techniques to develop alternative skills to manage difficult emotions.

Trauma and Survivors of Assault

There are many ways survivors of trauma heal and reclaim agency of their life. Therapy is one way to get support in healing. Therapy can help develop tools to manage difficult emotions or physical sensations related to trauma, reduce shame and feelings of loneliness, rethink unhelpful stories we tell ourselves about the trauma, and, perhaps find space or make meaning from trauma experiences. When working with survivors or people who have experienced trauma, I am take particular care to work at a pace set by the client.