ABOUT

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"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door"

~ Emily Dickinson

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The first thing I would like you to know about me is that I have an unshakable belief in the potential for healing and real change made possible by the process of psychotherapy. I have come to this position not only from the privilege of witnessing profound shifts in people I've worked with, but also from the powerfully healing experience of my own psychotherapy.

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HOW I WORK

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My approach is compassionate and collaborative. Incorporating both bottom-up (body) and top-down (mind) perspectives, I occupy an open-minded, open-hearted, respectful and nonjudgmental stance. I come to our work honoring your innate capacity to heal and to grow. I'm here to support your process. Sometimes this means actively listening to something that you need to say and be heard. Other times it means voicing an observation, asking, challenging, prompting an awareness, or otherwise intentionally guiding and supporting your process.

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THEORETICAL AND PRACTICE PERSPECTIVES

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My training and experience in incorporating the perspectives of Relational psychoanalytic psychotherapy (iarpp.net/about), Attachment and Intersubjective theories, Affective and Interpersonal Neurobiology, and the psychobiological approach of Somatic Experiencing (trauma healing.org/about) each guide my thinking and action in important ways. 

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Along with other perspectives such as Family Systems theory, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Emotionally Focused Therapy, and mindfulness practice, together these all inform an integrated theoretical and practice basis for an individualized holistic approach.

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Guided by an understanding that various relational dynamics of your life outside of therapy do inevitably present themselves in some form or another within the therapy room, a portion of my attention is dedicated to remaining present to my own conscious experience of the particular qualities and "feel" of our communication and overall interaction within sessions. This can then become a vehicle for inviting a shared curiosity into the moment and beginning to form ideas related to what may be occurring for you, or between us, within our interaction. In turn, I may voice my curiosity - via a question, a thought, an observation, an idea - and invite both of us (or, all three of us in couple sessions) to consider your awareness of your feelings, emotions, or physical sensations, or your awareness of how established belief systems came to be and/or are currently impacting you in the here-and-now.

 

This way of working together creates a relational paradigm which allows us to work as authentically, spontaneously, creatively and as deeply rooted in experience as I know to be possible.

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MY OWN PSYCHOTHERAPY

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As I mentioned earlier, the foundational reason why I hold the therapeutic process to contain such profound potential for growth and healing is that an integral part of my own healing and growth as a person, and training as a therapist, has taken place within my experience in psychotherapy as a patient. 

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I believe that any therapist is capable of being their best only when they have had their own meaningful experience in the hot-seat of their own therapeutic work. "We can only take another as far as we have come or are willing to go."

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MUSIC BACKGROUND

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I spent many years from early in my life working as a freelance drummer, mostly in New York City. My background in music - particularly studying, playing and teaching jazz - has been a major influence on how I think and work as a therapist (and, yes, I love working with performing artists!). An area of special interest to me is contemplating the many shared intersections connecting the craft and creative processes of both psychotherapy and improvised music.