My Approach

This approach to therapy centers around a therapeutic relationship that is built on empathy, authenticity, and unconditional positive regard. Only when we feel truly seen and understood, can we feel safe to explore our inner world and tap into our fullest potential. Clients are seen as the expert on their own experience and the therapist’s role is to create a compassionate, nonjudgemental environment to facilitate client self-exploration and personal growth. Rather than focusing on pathology or symptom management, the work is centered on the belief that everyone has potential for positive change and self-actualization.

The goal of psychodynamic therapy is to foster insight and self-reflection. Clients gain a deeper understanding of their unconscious processes, allowing for personal growth and the resolution of internal conflicts. The Psychodynamic lens helps us consider how our unconscious processes, unresolved conflicts, and past experiences influence our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. This approach is well-suited for clients wanting to explore their defense mechanisms and interpersonal patterns.

Strengths-Based Therapy modalities focus on a person’s inherent strengths and resources rather than deficits, problems, or disorders. Some of the Strengths-Based approaches I use are Narrative Therapy and Solution-Focused-Brief Therapy.

Narrative Therapy focuses on the stories we hold about our lives and ourselves. In this approach, clients are encouraged to challenge negative or limiting narratives they have been carrying, so that they can build more empowering ones. Often times, clients are able to step back from the rigid stories they’ve been telling themselves and instead create narratives that highlight their strengths, values, and abilities - instead of seeing themselves as “broken” or “flawed”.

Solution-Focused Therapy is a goal-oriented, future-focused form of therapy that emphasizes finding practical solutions to current problems. This modality tends to be brief, highly collaborative, and rooted in the belief that clients already have the strengths and resources needed to create change in their lives.

Many forms of therapy include an experiential aspect. These approaches go beyond just “talking” about problems. Instead, clients are guided to actively connect with their emotions, memories, and inner experiences in the moment - in the safety of the therapeutic relationship. When this happens, healing can take place on a deeper, more emotional level. Often times this work is incorporated through creative techniques such as art, guided imagery, role-play, movement, meditation or breath work. Experiential work helps clients feel more connected to their bodies and intuition, allowing for the release of long-held emotional burdens and an increased ability to live their lives more fully and authentically.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy aims to help individuals create rich and meaningful lives while effectively dealing with the challenges and difficulties that inevitably arise. With ACT, clients are encouraged to accept their thoughts and feelings rather than trying to eliminate or suppress them. As some would say, sometimes you have to go towards the pain to really get through it. Acceptance is not about liking or resigning to difficult experiences but about making room for them. ACT helps individuals build psychological flexibility - the ability to adapt and respond effectively to the ongoing demands of life. This approach incorporates mindfulness, cognitive defusion techniques, values clarification, and commitment to positive action.

ACT is especially effective for clients who are struggling with internal experiences (like thoughts, emotions, or physical sensations) and who may be stuck in cycles of avoidance or control. It is a versatile and evidence based approach that is well-suited for a wide range of struggles, such as: anxiety, depression, chronic pain, substance use disorders, OCD, PTSD, stress and burnout, life transitions and existential issues.

IFS is a powerful and compassionate form of psychotherapy that views our internal world as a family of “parts” with different roles for our system. We are complex individuals with a multitude of feelings and thoughts. Most of us cannot be defined by one trait. We are not always just anxious", scared, or controlling - but instead we have “parts” of us that might feel one way and parts of us that feel another. Parts that one to avoid and dissociate, and parts that want to heal. We might have an “inner critic” or a “perfectionist”, or an angry part.

In IFS therapy, we work to understand your inner world and listen to your parts instead of fighting them. We discover which parts are trying to protect you and which may be carrying old emotional wounds.

The ultimate goal in IFS is to help you connect with your “core Self” – a calm, curious part of you that can lead with compassion. From this place of “self-leadership”, you can begin to heal wounded parts while creating more inner peace.

IFS is well-suited for people who feel conflicted or as though they’re being pulled in different directions, as well as those struggling with anxiety, depression, trauma, and self-criticism. It’s been extremely helpful with my clients seeking to heal deep emotional wounds and gain greater self-awareness and self-compassion.