My Therapeutic Practice
My approach to therapy is rooted in self-compassion and radical acceptance. I am person-centered, trauma-informed, and cultivate a curious, non-judgemental, safe-as-possible, caring space for clients to share their stories. I am drawn toward a multi-dimensional view of the self and use parts work to help clients gain insight into issues of stuckness, ambivalence, and conflict. As a relationally-oriented therapist, I believe that generative insights can emerge from the client-therapist dynamic itself.
Coming from a social work background, I think about people holistically, as individuals unto themselves and as emerging from their current and past relationships, communities, and environments more broadly. I tend to integrate diagnosis into therapeutic treatment with critical care: while having a name for a certain set of feelings and behaviors can be empowering, it can also be pathologizing and stigmatizing without addressing the root causes of trauma. Ultimately, I use a psychodynamic, client-centered, open therapeutic style in which you are the expert of your own life and I serve to support your exploration, development, and cultivation of a life worth living.
I have a M.S.S. in Clinical Social Work Practice from Bryn Mawr College, a M.S.Ed. in Higher Education from the University of Pennsylvania, and a B.A. in English from Muhlenberg College. I have been practicing therapy since 2023, starting in community mental health and eventually transitioning to group private practice. Some of my other professional experience includes college academic advising, project management for arts and well-being research, and academic journal publishing.
More about some of the therapeutic approaches and modalities I use:
Ego-supportive
Promotes your existing strengths and helps you to develop new ones, supporting your coping ability and improving your self-esteem
Harm reduction
Finds ways to minimize (and not necessarily eliminate, in the way that an abstinence approach might) negative health impacts and reduce unwanted consequences of your coping strategies; emphasizes progress over perfection
Narrative
Supports cultivating the story of you over time, considering how the dominant narrative you tell yourself serves (or perhaps doesn’t serve) you and exploring alternatives accordingly
Parts work/Internal Family Systems
Aims to identify, understand, and embrace different parts of yourself that may be otherwise conflicted
Person-Centered
Assumes that you are the expert of your own experience, and that you have an innate ability to grow, heal, and create meaning
Psychodynamic
Explores your past experiences, attachment, and unconscious processes to understand how they impact your current feelings, sense of self, relationships, and behaviors
Relational
Delves into the impact of relationships on your psychology and well-being; uses the therapeutic relationship to stoke insight into your other relationships and as a source of healing
Solutions-oriented
Helps you to identify and create solutions to present problems, and dream and scheme about the life you want
Trauma-informed
Uses a safe-as-possible, supportive environment to help you explore and understand the impact that trauma has had on your life, and how you might begin to heal from it