What's My Approach to Therapy?
My approach is conversational, flexible, and collaborative. When we meet, I strive to offer compassion, support, and humor to help you best meet your goals. I am flexible in my approach, as there is no one “right way” to help you move toward your goals. Together, we will find an approach that is most reflective of who you are and speaks to your strengths.
Throughout this process, we will remain curious about your experience and integrate an understanding of your past and present that can inform your future. This process can be challenging, as well as exciting and empowering.
Together, we will track recurring themes, develop structures to organize your sense of self, and integrate a new understanding of how you can show up to life in all its situations. This process will afford you the possibility of being present and engaged with yourself, others, and the world in a new way. Therapy is an opportunity to invest in yourself.
When we do not honor who we really are, something feels off. We might be anxious about the future or feel stuck in repeating a pattern that is holding us back. This emerges in our relationship with others and ourselves. Through therapy, we can begin to track and clarify what it means to be human and to live authentically.
My Practice & Services
A little about who I am and my training background
I exercise as part of my lifestyle, particularly enjoying training for half marathons, lifting weights, kayaking, hiking, and walking my dog in the Fells or Battle Road. I regularly play pick-up hockey with friends, and have a long, personal history of competitive hockey and sports. My approach to life, as well as therapy, values exercise as a primary source of self-care and self-compassion developed through a commitment to Self.
I also have a daily meditation practice and enjoy exploring the benefits of this type of practice with clients interested in developing approaches to nurturing an internal and somatic sense of Self. I currently work with my long-time supervisor, who has cultivated a daily sitting practice for decades informed by a lineage of wonderful teachers in various traditions. His breadth of experience, training, and compassion are integral in informing both how I work with clients, and how I seek to personally develop my ability to be of support to others through care for my Self. I also work with a personal meditation and mindfulness teacher and practitioner in Copenhagen, for whom I have deep respect and admiration. If interested, I would highly recommend his podcast, Natural Meditation, which can be found on the Apple podcast app, Spotify, and Soundcloud.
I am a member of the New England Center for Existential Therapy and take year-long advanced trainings with founder Bob Fox, LICSW. This is a fundamental orientation I engage in to deepen my understanding of existential and attachment theory that informs my work. It also informs my personal way of Being. I am committed to being a lifelong learner and using multiple approaches that support this foundational training. I attempt to live an authentic lifestyle through participating in the skills and relationship to Self and Others that we explore, as it pertains to your current situated-ness in life, and how this informs your future.
I am also a person in recovery for years now, and have intimate knowledge of the challenges of early recovery, as well as the new challenge of daily maintenance of a sober way of life that extends beyond physical sobriety and into emotional sobriety. It is only when the alcohol, substance use, or addiction stops that emotional sobriety can begin. It is an arduous and wonderful journey at the same time, and being able to hold the tension of these multiple and paradoxical truths will require patience and support. My daily renewal of sobriety is a core practice that pervades my way of life.
I am also trained in ketamine assisted psychotherapy, which I offer as an additional treatment modality. Ketamine assisted psychotherapy can result in deep and lasting change, sometimes far more rapidly than with the separate use of psychotherapy or ketamine.
Ketamine assisted psychotherapy is a powerful tool for deep psychotherapy—combining deliberate preparation, a safe and connected psychotherapeutic exploration, focused intention and action, and ongoing intention of what was learned, seen, or experienced during the ketamine journey into the client’s daily life. This can result in not only new learning, but the opportunity to solidify that learning into new knowledge and wisdom. Deep, ketamine assisted psychotherapy can help change overwhelming or avoided emotional memories into a perceived past infused with compassion, equanimity, confidence, and hope.
Together, with your expertise in your own experience, the access provided through the mindful use of this medicine, and my knowledge of relational psychotherapy and navigating non-ordinary states, we create a healing relationship and space which can help you see your wounds clearly, bring the exiled parts of you home, and allow yourself to heal from your most deeply held wounds and misunderstandings.
My areas of practice and treatment modalities
I work with a range of adult clients experiencing depression, anxiety, mood conditions, trauma, relational issues, and alcohol or substance use issues.
I also offer ketamine assisted psychotherapy to clients. If you are interested in this modality, please contact me and I can clarify the process of verifying whether you would be a candidate for this modality.
