About Me & My Approach

My approach is grounded in kind curiosity and a non-judgmental space where you can be open about what you’re struggling with and explore meaningful ways your life and relationships might change. I don’t approach sessions to “fix” people—it’s about human-to-human support, understanding, and creating the conditions for growth and healing.

Together, we find a rhythm that feels supportive and respectful of your needs and life context. I view healing as something that happens both within us and in relationship. Much of our pain is shaped by personal history—our families, our relationships, and the ways we learned to survive and make meaning. At the same time, our struggles do not exist in isolation. They are embedded within larger systems of race, class, gender, sexuality, age, ability, religion, and culture. This is a safe place where we can gently explore both your individual story and the broader relational and societal contexts that have shaped you.

I believe in the idea of the wounded healer—that our shared humanity allows for deep understanding and connection—while honoring that each person’s experience is unique. I strive to meet clients with humility, empathy, and deep respect for their resilience. I believe people benefit from understanding their own values, rather than living primarily by the inherited expectations or authorities of others, and from learning to live in alignment with what matters personally.

Recent Advanced Professional Training

Recent Training with Esther Perel author of “Mating in Captivity”

Sessions Live 2026: Cultivating Aliveness — Desire & Its Disruptions
Professional Training with Esther Perel | New York City | May 2026

Two-day, in-person advanced training exploring contemporary relationships, intimacy and desire, fantasy research, relational connection, and the complexities that shape modern love. The program incorporated clinical frameworks and interventions, live case consultation, experiential workshops, and multidisciplinary perspectives on helping individuals and couples restore curiosity, connection, vitality, and aliveness in their relationships. The program explored tools for restoring curiosity, evolving forms of relationship and family, and ways practitioners can help people navigate disconnection and cultivate aliveness through eroticism, communication, connection, security/freedom, and play.

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Residential training intensive with Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés Réyes Author of Women Who Run With the Wolves

Mysterium—The Homecoming: Beyond Cultural Competency — A Return to the Rootstock Colorado | 2026

The immersive five-day residential training explored the ancestral, cultural, and imaginal roots of psychological understanding and healing. The intensive drew from storytelling, fairy tales, myth, archetypes, and Jungian & depth-psychology traditions as paths for understanding identity, transformation, and wisdom carried through generations.

The intensive included exploring dream work, shadow, anima and animus, complexes, the Self, somatic and ancestral patterns, intergenerational and historical trauma, cultural displacement, belonging, and inherited survival strategies. A central theme was what Dr. Estés describes as decontamination work. Examining and loosening the conditioning, inherited messages of how you “should” be, cultural distortions, and internalized narratives that can separate people from their own knowing, instincts, imagination, and hard-won wisdom.

The training also emphasized the restorative power of story—how fairy tales, myths, ancestral narratives, and archetypal images can help people recover and attune to parts of themselves that have been silenced, doubted, exiled, or forgotten and reconnect with a deeper sense of meaning, discernment, and inner authority.

My Influences

My work is integrative and relational, drawing from:

• Family systems and attachment-based approaches

• Somatic and experiential approach

• Internal Family Systems

• Jungian Depth-Oriented Practice

• Trauma-informed Care

• Existential Philosophy

• Narrative and EFT

• Mindfulness- and compassion-centered practices

• Schema & Life Pattern Work

• Psychodynamic Theory

• Feminist and Liberation Ideology

My approach is to accompany you—thoughtfully, respectfully, and without judgment—as you find your way forward.

Areas of Special Focus

Couples

My approach helps couples slow down and understand the patterns that keep them stuck—how attachment needs, family-of-origin experiences, past hurts, and protective parts shape communication, intimacy, and conflict. Rather than positioning partners as adversaries, I help couples become a team: communicating more clearly, repairing ruptures more effectively, and building emotional safety, trust, and connection together.

Conflict is not simply evidence that something is wrong, but often as an expression of relational longing. We tend to fight because the relationship matters—because we still want to be known, understood, and to belong to one another. Yet there can be harmful conflict and unhealthy peace-keeping. Avoiding difficult conversations may create a fragile peace built on silence or disconnection, while destructive fighting can deepen hurt and defensiveness.

Drawing in part on Priya Parker’s work in The Art of Fighting, I weave in some of her concepts around the potential “transformative power of conflict” and help couples move toward healthier, more generative conflict: identifying what the disagreement is truly about, clarifying the needs and longings beneath it, and learning how to remain connected across meaningful differences. The goal is not to eliminate disagreement or make partners the same. It is to help them fight for understanding rather than victory—and to discover honest and sustainable ways of belonging to one another.

I work with couples experiencing communication problems, recurring conflict, emotional disconnection, intimacy and desire concerns, and major relationship transitions. I also specialize in infidelity and affair recovery, helping couples process betrayal, understand what happened, rebuild trust, and determine what healing might look like—whether they are recommitting to the relationship or discerning their next steps.

I support individuals and couples who are deciding whether to have children, including partners who do not initially agree about parenthood. I also work with couples through pregnancy and the transition to parenthood—the emotional and relational process of becoming parents. This season can intensify old patterns, reshape intimacy and identity, and create new stress around roles, responsibilities, family boundaries, and the division of labor. Our work creates space to navigate these changes intentionally while protecting the couple’s connection.

My couples-therapy approach draws from Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), the Gottman Method, Attachment-based therapy, Internal Family Systems (IFS), family-of-origin work, and Mindful Compassionate Dialogue. In May 2026, I completed advanced training with Esther Perel focused on desire, intimacy, relational aliveness, and the disruptions that can occur within long-term relationships.

Discernment Counseling

Discernment Counseling is a structured process for couples when they are unsure about continuing the relationship. Rather than moving immediately into traditional couples sessions, discernment counseling creates a thoughtful space to slow down and better understand what has happened in the relationship, what each partner has contributed to the current difficulties, and whether there is sufficient willingness and capacity to work toward change. Through a combination of joint and individual conversations, the process helps clarify direction with care and honesty.

Couples typically choose one of three paths: maintain the status quo for now, move toward separation, or commit to a period of couples work with intention and focus. The goal is not to pressure a particular outcome, but to support clarity, dignity, and compassionate decision-making about the future of the relationship. This approach is grounded in Emotional Focus (EFT), exploring repeating conflict patterns, attachment styles, systems theory, schemas, and values.

Adult Family Relationships

I specialize in working with adult children navigating complicated relationships with parents and siblings—particularly when high control, codependency, emotional immaturity, abuse, neglect, or personality disorders are present. This work often involves boundary-setting, grief, and relational healing. I work with individuals and, when appropriate, with willing parent–adult child pairs seeking repair.

I also work with adult children navigating the emotional and practical complexities of caring for aging parents. This stage of life can bring up grief, responsibility, guilt, and unresolved dynamics—especially when past aspects of the relationship have been painful or harmful. Some people are also facing the difficult question of whether and how much they want to be involved. In session, we create space to explore these layered feelings, clarify boundaries, and support thoughtful decision-making. My goal is to help clients care for themselves while navigating caregiving with greater meaning, clarity, compassion, and emotional steadiness.

ADHD and Neurodiversity

I bring both professional and personal experience with ADHD and neurodiversity to my work. Many adults with ADHD describe their experience as noticing too much—both externally and internally—rather than a simple lack of attention. The brain can struggle to filter sensory input, which can lead to feeling overwhelmed by environmental stimulation and mental overload. At the same time, ADHD can include periods of hyperfocus, where one becomes deeply absorbed in a task they find engaging and may lose track of time or find it hard to shift attention, sometimes creating task paralysis.

For many adults, ADHD also shows up as internal restlessness—a constant flow of ideas and thoughts rather than outward hyperactivity. Alongside these challenges, ADHD can also offer strengths such as creativity, intuition, and the superpower of hyperfocus. Many adults carry years of frustration or self-criticism from feeling misunderstood or judged. I take a compassionate, neurodiversity-affirming approach to understanding how your brain and nervous system work, focusing on developing practical strategies while also building on your natural strengths.

Perimenopause and Menopause

This stage of life can be emotionally turbulent and deeply disorienting, often arriving in early to mid 40’s with little cultural awareness and preparation. I support in navigating value realignments, mood changes, identity shifts, grief, adjusting to aging and body changes, anger, and the cultivation of self-compassion during this transition.

Life Transitions & Existential Realignment in Values

I love to work with people facing midlife questions, value shifts, and “now what?” moments—times when old ways of living no longer fit and new meaning is still forming. I approach humans as always in a state of becoming, using imagination, openness, and intentionality to shape what comes next—or to support acceptance and coping skills when life unfolds beyond our choosing.

Expats - Transitions & Relocation

I guide people through the emotional and relational complexities of moving to another country. While this can be hopeful and exciting, it often includes grief, fear, cultural shock, and identity shifts. Having personally experienced this transition, I offer grounded support through the emotional and practical challenges involved.

Performance and Creativity

I enjoy working with artists, performers, and athletes who are pursuing their dreams while navigating the emotional, relational, and identity complexities along the way. I have experience supporting actors, dancers, athletes, and musicians. I understand the pressures of performance, evaluation in auditions and tryouts, and identity development. Together, we can work with performance anxiety, self-doubt, burnout, injury, and the challenge of staying grounded. There is often a quiet but essential need to cultivate a sense of self-worth that is deeper and more stable than admiration for what you can do. Our work may also include tending to concerns that arise beyond performance itself, such as anxiety, depression, trauma, eating disorders, and interpersonal or relational stress.

I integrate performance psychology, somatic awareness, and depth-oriented arpproaches. I draw from modalities such as CBT to reframe unhelpful thought patterns, mindfulness and acceptance-based practices to support presence and focus, and trauma-informed approaches to help release deeper blocks. We may also use visualization and guided imagery to mentally rehearse and build confidence, along with breathwork and relaxation techniques to regulate the nervous system under pressure. I incorporate practical tools such as goal setting, positive self-talk, and imagery, while also supporting the deeper work of meaning-making and identity. I also value creative pathways to healing—art, movement, poetry, music, and storytelling can offer an embodied language that opens meaningful avenues for growth.

Trauma & Recovery from Sexual and Intimate Partner Violence

I work with individuals healing from sexual violence, intimate partner violence, and emotional abuse, including the additional harm that can arise from responses within relationships, legal and social systems, and the media. I am deeply familiar with how trauma can shape the nervous system, relationships, sense of self, and capacity for trust.

I specialize in helping people reclaim their lives, reconnect with their inherent worth, and disentangle themselves from inherited patterns and limiting stories. Becoming Imaginal is about making room for who you are becoming, with greater freedom, connection, creativity, and aliveness. What happened to you matters, and your life deserves room to hold more.

We cannot undo what we have experienced. There is grief for what happened, what was lost, and the life you imagined before it was interrupted through trauma. Your healing deserves its own pace and style. Together, we can make space for that grief while exploring what lost, what you want to reclaim, and what you want to create.

I understand the silence that can come from fear, the courage it can take to speak, and the pain of not being believed. You do not have to tell every detail of your story to receive care. Myths about violence and harmful responses from others can deepen isolation; I meet you with tenderness, validation, and respect for your choices. I know many experience the lack of care and helpful responses. But there are people who care. I care. I am here to sit with you.

Healing is not linear. It does include grief, anger, pain, confusion, relief, and moments of renewed possibility. Our sessions offer a steady, relational space to feel it all and to reconnect with your body, voice, and inner knowing at a pace that feels manageable. Recovery is possible, including greater trust in yourself, meaningful connection, and room for pleasure and joy.

Gender and Sexuality

Your gender, sexuality, and ways of loving are welcome. I celebrate LGBTQIA+, transgender and gender-diverse, kink, polyamorous, and other ways of being and relating. Sessions support you in becoming—and being—more fully you.

Religiosity and Spirituality

I hold reverence for the many ways people experience faith, spirituality, meaning, and mystery. I am moved by the divine and the unknown, and approach different paths of belief—and nonbelief—with curiosity and respect. I find particular wisdom in secular Buddhism, while welcoming the traditions, questions, practices, and ways of making meaning that matter to you.

I also hold space for those healing from religious trauma, including the complicated work of questioning, grieving, reclaiming, or discovering what you believe for yourself.

Sessions for Therapists & Professional Consultation
I enjoy working with therapists and other professionals who value insight, curiosity, and personal growth. I love to hold space for the unique experiences therapists face and understand the complexity of tending to your own deep personal work while spending much of your professional and personal life supporting others. I also offer consultation for professionals interested in applying psychological insight to their work, relationships, leadership, creativity, and business. Together, we explore how a deeper understanding of human behavior, motivation, communication, and relational dynamics can support both personal well-being and professional growth.

Art of Connection Groups

I lead creative, connection-focused groups designed to help people build meaningful relationships and explore practical, human-centered responses to loneliness and disconnection. Through guided conversation, expressive arts, play, reflection, and shared experiences, these groups create opportunities for people to move beyond surface-level interaction and experience a deeper sense of belonging.

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Education

• Master's Degree in Psychology, Couple and Family - Antioch University, Seattle

• Bachelor of Arts in Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies, Honors - University of Washington

Awards

• Student of the Year 2016 Washington Association of Marriage and Family Therapy

• Women Studies Capstone Award for thesis on Healing after Sexual Violence

• Sterling and Gene Munro Fellow for Public Service 

Advocacy & Service

• Guest Lecturer in Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies Courses 

• RAINN Speakers Bureau - The nation's largest anti-sexual violence organization

• P.A.V.E., Promoting Awareness Victim Empowerment

• Designed and taught a course focusing on Self-care in Social Justice Work

• New Graduates Address Speaker at UW Women Studies Graduation 

• Home Alive Volunteer, Fundraiser, and Auction Contributor

• Women Studies Departmental Development Advancement Committee Member

• Legal Voice Volunteer

• Washington Community Action Network Volunteer

Memberships

• American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT)

• Washington Association of Marriage and Family Therapy (WAMFT)

• Psychology Today 

License

• Marriage and Family License Washington State LF61136552

• NPI 1861939472

• Virginia LMFT License number 0717002694

• Michigan LMFT License number 4101007730

• Connecticut License number 27.003379

• Vermont Teletherapy License number 100.0134298TELE

• South Carolina Teletherapy License number 1108

• Delaware Telehealth License number MI-0000146

• Florida Telehealth License number TPMF1298