I am a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in California specializing in trauma informed therapy for individuals, couples and families. I bring empathy and curiosity to relational psychodynamic therapy, an approach that heals with the therapeutic relationship while seeking insight into the unconscious mind.
I specialize in trauma informed treatment for highly sensitive people. My clients are often intuitive, empathic, artistic individuals. If you have ever been told you are too sensitive, moody or dramatic, you will be at home here with me. I can show you how your sensitivities can become your greatest strengths with a direct approach tempered by gentle loving kindness. My wish is to offer an expansive space for personal exploration that supports you to be your authentic self while you find your purpose and passion in life. I work with artists, creatives, writers and thinkers to refine their voice, clarify their vision and give expression to their creative aspirations. Bringing light to the unconscious processes that influence your choices is the path to healing the heart, mind and spirit. We'll take a look at your underlying beliefs, perhaps even some you didn't know you had, and see how these are informing your actions, habits and responses. We'll explore your early childhood and your first relationships, those that wounded you and those that inspired you, looking to see how your past is impacting your future. In every instance, you will be the one to choose the direction of our inquiry and the depth of the waters in which we swim.
I use an emotion focused, heart centered approach to help couples build trust, open to vulnerability, rekindle intimacy, and communicate with honesty and empathy. Whether you are seeking couples counseling for help recovering from infidelity or another breach of trust, confronting issues around gender identity or sexual intimacy, navigating deeper levels of commitment, co-parenting or managing major life transitions, I can help you find ways to speak to each other more skillfully, hold one another's uniqueness with compassion, and approach your relationship with renewed curiosity, connection, respect and desire.
With their own tiny ecosystem, couples have the unique ability to swiftly co-regulate or foster rapid emotional disregulation with as little as a look, touch, or word. Couples therapy can help you harness the breathtaking power of your attachment to create the future you intend and desire with (or without) your partner. I hold no preconceptions about how the course of treatment should proceed in that regard. Some couples come to therapy to breakup, others to get back together and still others come in to gain clarity about what they want. My role is simply to facilitate your resolution to move forward in a way that brings you security and happiness, however that may look in your specific situation.
When one member of a family is hurting, the whole family suffers. Conversely, the dysfunction of the whole can show up in the enactments of a single family member. As a Marriage and Family Therapist, I help families experiencing the impact of grief and loss, divorce, substance use, mental illness and trauma. I also support clients who are moving through the normal growing pains of individuation and differentiation. Put more simply, how do you, as a family, stay balanced in a healthy dynamic together while maintaining your independence and individuality as separate people. As a therapist, my role is to teach you the skills to gain insight into the root of the problem, communicate effectively, take responsibility for your part, act with compassion, and find strategies to move forward in a different way by identifying and breaking long standing patterns of behavior that have caused disruption in your family of origin. Sometimes this work begins individually and evolves to include siblings, a parent, or a partner incrementally and other times the whole family begins treatment together, whatever makes most sense for your unique situation.
It takes courage to take the first step. Text me at 415-857-5660 or fill out this form. I am a San Francisco Bay Area therapist offering online therapy throughout California. In person appointments are available to local residents of Marin County and San Francisco at my office in Tiburon, CA.