Credentials

• Licensed Professional Counselor in the state of Colorado
• Master's degree in Transpersonal Counseling and Psychology from Naropa University with an emphasis in Art Therapy
• Bachelor's degree from Mills College in French and English poetry
• Extended learning and study in these areas:
  • Trauma especially sexual assault and abuse
  • Art Therapy
  • Body Centered Psychotherapy
  • Attachment Therapy
  • Gestalt Therapy
  • Couple's Therapy
• Extensive Hatha yoga and meditation training and practice
• Mother of one amazing son

Specialties

I have extensive training and experience working with trauma, both mild and acute, episodic and extending over time. If you are living with trauma then you know first hand how small and limited your world can become as a result of untreated trauma. The specific way I can help you heal differs from person to person based on the trauma and your unique  processing style. Whether we work together somatically or through art, we will spend ample time supporting you to access your strengths and resources before moving to integrate traumatic material. We move slowly, attuned to your needs from moment to moment. Only in this way can you begin to metabolize overwhelming experience and thus find your way back to connection with yourself and feeling safe in your world. 

I have worked extensively with the Crime Victim Compensation Program in Colorado since 2002.

Art-making allows you to get out of your head and into your body and heart, where your greatest wisdoms lie. If you have talked about your issues for a long time without seeing significant changes in your life, it may be time to try a nonverbal modality that can take you out of your head and into your less conscious knowing.

If you are thinking, “I’m not creative,” or “I can’t make art,” fear not. You don’t have to have any prior art experience or art proficiency to be able to benefit from art processes. My clients with no art experience benefit just as fully as those with art experience. 

When we decide that art therapy should be part of your treatment plan, you will be given a choice of art materials: from wood, clay, watercolor, acrylics, collage, stone, writing, dance, music, etc.. I will encourage you to choose your materials through the intuitive knowing that comes from deep listening to your bodily impulses.

Again, you will be accompanied and guided through every step of this process.

Once an image has emerged through your art-making, you will engage the second phase of this process which is conversing with your image. Here insight and self-understanding begin to emerge as unconscious processes come to light to be worked with.

Art therapy is a deep and revealing therapeutic modality that I encourage you to experience first hand should you have the inclination.

Body-centered psychotherapies are designed to bring you into direct and immediate relationship with yourself. Using mindfulness and presence you will be supported to connect with your internal felt experience. Once connected, we follow your sensations, discovering what you need for release and resolution. When you drop out of your mind and into your body you get direct access into what is actually going on--often different from what you think is going on. Additionally, no longer do you risk giving your power away to others. You will develop skills to establish direct contact with yourself, to see yourself clearly, as well as methods to be able to align with yourself. The therapeutic modality itself is empowering.

My work as a psychotherapist is deeply informed by my 30 years of intensive meditation and yoga training. I bring deep presence to our sessions together, as well as practical tools to help you regulate your nervous system. With a regulated nervous system you will be better equipped to meet personal and interpersonal challenges .

Deep connection, aliveness and fulfillment get blocked by negative thought patterns and behavior. Together, we will develop mindfulness strategies that will allow you to experience nonjudgmental self-awareness, thus forging a path back to balance and wellness, and the pleasure of being you.

I bring decades of specialization in attachment therapy. From an attachment therapy point of view, our working understanding and expectations of relationships are informed by our early relationships with our caregivers. While we can gain much understanding into why we are the way we are in relationships, we need not be condemned to reenacting these early dynamics. By understanding the impact these early relationships had on us, as well as identifying maladaptive patterns that no longer serve us, we can begin to create new patterns and expectations conducive to deep connection, love, and intimacy.

I integrate Gestalt therapy into my practice of both art and body centered psychotherapy. Gestalt therapy is based on the idea that we have a fundamental drive toward wholeness. When we take time in therapy to integrate the many parts of ourselves, we gain more access to our full selves. When using a gestalt approach, we work with what is arising in the present moment and create "experiments" to help us integrate the disparate parts of ourselves into a more cohesive, fully self-knowing and self-accepting whole.

My work with couples has developed over time, informed by my extensive attachment therapy work as well as work helping people move from out-dated ways of behaving to more adaptive ways conducive to giving and receiving love. Couple's therapy is always exciting as we meet the system that is your couple and discover how to orient its individuals to fully profit from the energy your couple offers. Together we discover how to help you both open more and more to the love available in your couple. Influences to my work include: Imago therapy, Psychobiological approach to couple's therapy, David Snarch, David Deida, Harville Hendrix, and Stan Tatkin to name a few.

Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy combines cognitive behavioral techniques with mindfulness strategies in order to better understand and navigate our thoughts and emotions. I support you in getting to know the mechanisms that characterize your distressed thoughts and emotions, and then guide you to develop new choices conducive to experiencing what you actually want to experience for yourself.