Training and Experience:

In addition to my private practice in psychotherapy I lead Encountering Your Wild Sacred Circle Gatherings/Courses and facilitate Encountering Your Wild Retreats where we learn from the female archetypes to deepen the connection to the wild and truest self through stories, myths, and folklore. Stories are medicine. My experience spans over 20 years and includes individual psychotherapy, community psychiatric care, community clinic care in both the United States and Central America as well as working with marginalized populations, in-patient/out-patient treatment, and facillitating sacred circles for women. Most aspects of my career have a concentration on treating a variety of women’s issues and concerns.

 
 

Therapeutic Approach

  • The foundation of my therapeutic approach has its roots planted deep in the belief that healing comes in the context of the human encounter. Overall, I practice the art of depth psychology in psychotherapy from a Relational Psychotherapeutic (RPT) lens. Relational Psychodynamic Therapy (RPT). RPT is a method of treatment grounded in depth psychology (particularly contemporary relational psychoanalysis), interpersonal neurobiology, the dialogical philosophy of Martin Buber, and the sacredness of the person and of the therapeutic act. I approach my work with a belief in the power of the human connection and the ability of people to nurture one another. I work with patients at least once a week, sometimes seeing people multiple times per week.  The frequency is dependent upon the depth of self-knowledge desired, clinical appropriateness, schedule, availability, and resources.

  • Body awareness and embodiment are a focus in my treatment. I work with people helping them to regulate emotions through applied somatic experiences.

  • I desire to create a safe environment. My work is informed by the belief that everything is relational. Beginning with our therapeutic relationship based on mutual respect, my goal is to help create a more balanced empowered life: one that is both authentic and open to healing, growth, and change.

  • My own therapeutic journey sets a foundation and continues to inform my work with you. I believe the greatest gift I have to offer you is to bring my most authentic self to our relationship and work from the start. 

  • I help clients explore ways of articulating their feelings and integrating aspects of experience that may have been inaccessible. From this collaborative exploration, new frameworks for meaning are created that allow for greater vitality. By paying attention to what is happening in the here-and-now between us in the therapeutic relationship, we can oftentimes trace unconscious relational patterns back to early childhood and create new relational narratives that re-enforce new healthier patterns of relating to yourself and others, allowing you to show up in the world the way you would like to show up rather than how you were taught to show up.

 

Specializations

  • Psychotherapy

  • Identity Issues

  • Spirituality Issues- Religious abuse & De/Re-construction

  • Interpersonal Relationship Issues

  • Childhood Trauma

  • Anxiety Disorders

  • PTSD/Complex PTSD

  • Anxiety/Depression

  • Multicultural Counseling/Culture/ethnicity Issues: As a multiracial woman, social justice and systemic oppresions are personal and professional values of mine.

Somatic: Research has confirmed the critical role the body and its autonomic nervous system play in re-negotiating past trauma still held in the body. Those unresolved experiences show up as pain, emotions of anger, fear, confusion, and general body tension. Somatic Experiencing (SE) is a naturalistic form of healing that can help individuals learn how to settle and release physiological symptoms from their bodies. I am not a certified SE psychotherapist but have a training certification from Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, the author of The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma.

Ritual Creation:

  • Rituals help us establish routine and stability

  • Rituals offer a way to self-soothe and self-nurture

  • Rituals allow us to explore and experiment with our ability to transform.

  • Rituals give us a justification to make space for ourselves

The use of ritual in my psychotherapy practice can include elements of embodiment — authority and power to modify behavior by including a client’s spiritual practices and beliefs, marking a loss or celebration, as well as other more personal collaborative rituals. 

Theoretical Orientation:

  • Relational Psychodynamic Psychotherapy-RPT

  • Object Relations

  • Trauma-informed

  • Committed to LGBTQIA + equality and support for all expressions of gender identity

  • Anti-oppression / Culturally sensitive