My Approach to Helping

Psychotherapy is more than just a process of helping people feel better, it's about creating a life worth living. Whether you're feeling stuck or depressed, struggling with the demands of work and family, grappling with anxiety, or more grandly, contemplating ideas of self, we can work together to explore your thoughts, sift through your existential questions, and improve your sense of well-being.

I have advanced training in various forms of evidence-based psychotherapy with a specialty in in-depth counseling. My framework for practice is eclectic—grounded in social work principles and guided by congruent concepts from modern psychodynamic theory. Broadly speaking, my approach to psychotherapy is descriptive of a “client-centered” model. That is to say, I emphasize the dignity and worth of the individual and focus on their enduring capacity to overcome psychological and moral dilemmas. In other words, I suppose that the primary and overwhelming force for change has to come from within the individual. It follows then that I stress the client’s dynamic participation in his or her own change process and try to foster careful and genuine collaboration between myself and the client. In so doing, I set out to design an atmosphere where dialogue is organic and guided by the client’s interests and instincts, as opposed to being driven solely by my interpretations. When I do offer interpretation and redescription though, I use words thoughtfully and with precision. As a student of the "Penn Approach", I believe in individual difference—the idea that all people are unique. So, what works for one person, may not work for another, and vice versa. As such, I don’t proceed rigidly with a set approach based on a category of problems or diagnosis(es); rather, I relate to clients individually and holistically. I also lean heavily on empathic understanding. What I mean by this, is the willingness and ability to understand a client’s thoughts, feelings, and struggles from their point of view. This capacity to see the world from the client’s perspective is really the basis, I believe, for cultivating a climate of introspection and for bringing about positive and lasting change.

If you’re considering therapy and would like to talk a bit without committing anything on your end, I’d be happy to speak by phone or communicate via email. Together we can decide if therapy is the right decision for you and if it would be a good fit.