About Me
I am an East Coast transplant who made her way West via a five-year stopover on the front range of the Rocky Mountains. I attended a very traditional master’s program in Counseling Psychology, then decided that I wanted something different in a Ph.D. program. I earned my Ph.D in Clinical Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies in 2000. I worked for 20 years in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco, first as a case manager with San Francisco General Hospital and then as the manager of a mental health/substance use program through the Harm Reduction Therapy Center. I am trained in harm reduction psychotherapy, have completed the first level of training in Sensorimotor Psychotherapy for working with trauma, and have completed the advanced training curriculum with the Systems-Centered Therapy and Research Institute. I have also developed a keen interest in applying psychoanalytically driven concepts to my understanding of how we grow into our awareness of ourselves. This includes how the quality of the therapeutic relationship itself is essential for our development and transformation, especially for those parts of ourselves that we no longer need or that hold us back from living the kind of life we want.
The first step toward change begins when we become aware of our experience.
Beginning therapy, beginning anything new, is never easy, especially when we have never done it before. Although we may be suffering, our human experience tells us that the known is always going to be more comfortable than the unknown. When you start thinking about making that first contact with a therapist, you’re already beginning to change. Sometimes when we begin to change, we notice others reacting to our changes and we ourselves may feel a bit worse. That’s normal. I will be here to walk with you on the path of this process, developing a pace that is right for you as we work together.