About Me

For much of my life psychology and mental health to me was a mystery I wasn’t interested in exploring. I thought I had everything handled. Then, as they say, life showed up in a big way, and it became very difficult to navigate. Since then I had deep transformational experiences in how I view life, what its worth, and what I am do to with it all.

I found myself. And you can too.

I would like to help you on your road to health and healing, to acceptance and personal agency.

I’ve been working in the mental health field for 6 years. As a milieu counselor for 3.5 years on the floor of a psychiatric hospital, I assisted in helping clients through some of their lowest and challenging times in their lives. I learned a lot there; I’d say it was cutting my teeth, a jumping into the deep end while I was working on my master’s degree in counseling.

From full blown detachment from reality, methamphetamine psychosis, delusions, to wanting to die, to inability to get out of bed for days at a time or not showering for weeks, from substance abuse, addiction and relationship issues, to a failure to cope with sudden changes in life, I was involved with helping people suffering every type of mental issue one can have.

And yet, not one of them was the same. Every person, every problem, was unique to the person herself. In every occasion it was the individual person, doing the best they can. Their own unique experiences and conditions that not only brought the person to seek help, but often enough, allowed them to grow and ultimately get better.

In a strange way, it is the problem that moves one to health, to one’s Self. Through seeking we then find ourselves, and our way forward.

I am skilled educated and an effective therapist in a variety of mental health interventions. I am available for integrative therapy as well.

The evidence-based protocols I use are linked through a substantive and inclusive philosophy of intervention:

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for all sorts of mental issues.
Internal Family Systems, again, for most issues.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for dealing with depression and mood disorders.
Dialectical Behavioral Therapy for emotional regulation and personality disorders.
Collaborative Assessment and Management of Suicidality (CAMS), which is a well-studied and evidenced-based protocol to help clients manage suicidality and in many cases overcome it.

These lend themselves to the workings of knowledge that is your Self through the more substantive knowledge oriented and experience based interventions:

Existential Therapy helps resolve fundamental conflicts.
Depth Counseling, and its incorporation of dreams, help to substantiate one’s health in the real world itself.

I publish philosophical papers on the discipline of Counseling and mental health, and a few books on Western Continental philosophy. My academic work is centered upon epistemology, what is allowable to knowing for what is real and what is true. In a manner of speaking, mental issue arises due to feeling of the disconnect between what is real and what is true.

Why Choose Me?

I understand feeling under the thumb of some outside force. Unable to understand ourselves or why we are the way we are, or being unable to enact the change we can see so clearly, therapy is about your process of health, of healing. I am with you in your journey while bringing for your benefit the wealth of my experience and education, information that we sort out together. We feel, together. We work together to find trust, to help you through, to feel what you need to feel. To process what you need to process, to experience what you need to experience – this is mental health therapy.

I teach you mental health skills to navigate the present. Which you then can use how you want and need, to process and come to terms with how you think and feel, and what might be needed from the past, to move you toward who you want to be and what you value, for the future you want to have.

I approach your issue collaboratively with you. It might not seem like it right now, but the solution is within you. It is through our teamwork that I can help you to access and understand what is actually happening and the solution that works. As well, I will help to you to learn skills to help you more effectively engage with your life and move you toward what you want from it.

As well, I am very familiar with psychological medications, and work well in collaboration with psychiatric medication providers, if that is something with which you also are involved.