Mental health care from a whole heart.
Healing through connection
All too often, we’ve been deeply wounded by those closest to us. These wounds leave us feeling alone, afraid, unworthy, unlovable, and lost. Our brains try to make sense of the difficult experiences we’ve lived through—experiences that often lack sense. This leaves us with ways of reacting and interacting with our world that often just don’t work and keep us struck in cycles of pain.
We need relationships to heal. We need caring, safe relationships to help us unlearn the ways we’ve been conditioned to protect ourselves.
That’s where I hope to be helpful.
My hope is to be one of those safe places for you to be free to recalibrate your understanding of what it means to be vulnerable, open, and connected. Whether you’re struggling with the lasting impacts of trauma, OCD, difficulty making meaningful and lasting connections, or a general sense of fear and anxiety, my goal is to help you reconnect to yourself, develop a more compassionate relationship with your body and emotions, and become deeply connected.
My approaches
Attachment-oriented
This approach is particularly supportive for folks with histories of developmental trauma or difficult early life experiences with caretakers and close relationships.
Relational
We will use the security of the relationship to serve as a foundation to explore dynamics that don’t get to be named or identified in most of our relationships throughout our lives.
Somatic
We will use the body as our guide and find ways to call it home.
EMDR
EMDR is an approach to treat trauma. It is structured and used to both desensitize you to the impacts of trauma memories as well as reprocess these memories to create room for your inner wisdom to move to the forefront.
Acceptance & Commitment Therapy & Exposure Response Prevention for OCD
When used in tandem, these approaches allow folks with OCD, and many other anxiety disorders, to de-emphasize the importance of their thoughts, engage with mindfulness, and move towards a life rooted in values as opposed to simply avoiding fear.
Commitment to
Anti-Oppression
Mental health care is part of a historically problematic system and the diagnosing and treatment of mental health disorders continues to remain both in denial of cultural contexts that foster these disorders as well as the ways in which treatment is often available only to those who hold certain degrees of privilege. Here are a few ways I work to embrace anti-oppression in my work:
I honor your lived experience and the wisdom and expertise you hold in knowing yourself and what you need to heal. My hope is to help you come into deeper contact with this wisdom—not for me to be the one to impart the wisdom or expertise.
I acknowledge and reflect the ways in which our cultural context shapes mental health and presentations of disorders.
I am committed to doing the personal work of excavating harmful beliefs and patterns I’ve been taught as a person with various identities of privilege in order to avoid unintentional harm to clients. I regularly engage in education, training, and discussion around these issues.
I will remain open, curious, and receptive to feedback around any issues that show up in the therapeutic relationship and work to repair ruptures that occur in ways that are safe and honoring for clients.
I offer sliding scale fees that prioritize BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ folks in accessing these spots. I also accept insurance (PacificSource, Moda, and OHP CareOregon) to help increase access to mental health care.