intimacy / communication / context / sex / validation / empathy / understanding / value / meaning / connection

I have over a decade of expertise in conceptualizing and treating struggling interpersonal and intimate relationships. Through a honed lens of social constructionism, I focus on understanding and meeting the unique needs, meanings, and values of each relationship. Every relationship is unlike any other. This stance promotes authentic curiosity and explores how we make meaning together. Meaning and action are closely interwoven in our relationships, and each member of the relational context influences the culture and landscape of the interpersonal experiences within. In therapy, we collaborate in creating a new way of relating that allows the rediscovery of empathy for each other in these contexts, and resolves troubling patterns of communication and differences in expectations that negatively impact understanding, connection, and value...

I strive to understand your goals, help you communicate and form these goals explicitly, and reach them effectively.  I have worked with couples, families, parents, Veterans, adolescents, and individuals on strengthening their relationships and interpersonal skills. I have expertise in working with LGBTQIA+ relationships, sex therapy, and increasing physical and emotional intimacy between partners who seek nonjudgmental therapeutic space and openness to non-traditional relationships (i.e., polyamory, open relationships, play partners, swingers, friends with benefits (FWBs), BDSM etc.). I work with couples/relationships and individuals addressing pornography consumption, kink, and all manner of consensual play.  (See additional relational competencies in the ‘diversity’ sections and relationship based ‘services.’)  I often employ a mixture of Integrative Behavioral Couples Therapy and Emotion Focused Couples Therapy when working with intimate partners. I have an extensive background in Family Systems modalities as well, including Gottman Method, Structural Family Therapy, Narrative Therapy, Family Systems, and others.

I work with clients to improve their interpersonal functioning both within relational contexts (i.e., couples, families), as well as with individuals who would like to focus on their past, present, and future interpersonal interactions. Clients explore the relational impacts of experiences such as rejection sensitivity, feelings of codependency, attachment concerns, life transitions, divorce, trust, shame, self-esteem, assertiveness, and the impact of dating in the digital-age (i.e., feeling ignored, insecure, ghosting, text communications). See additional services and expertise for more information.