My Approach

I view therapy as a
collaborative process,
and I am respectful of each person’s
unique challenges,
strengths,
and goals.

My therapeutic style is warm, deeply caring, and empathically responsive. I offer you a safe, welcoming space to explore current struggles, express what causes you pain, expand your awareness of internal and external obstacles and create pathways toward deep and lasting change. I view therapy as a collaborative process, and I am respectful of each person’s unique challenges, strengths and goals. The treatment modalities I integrate in our work together are guided by your concerns, symptoms and preferences, and grounded in evidence-based practice and current research on the process of change.

My practice is strongly informed by Emotionally-Focused Therapy (EFT), an evidence-based approach designed to help people accept, express, regulate, understand and transform emotion. As one of the most thoroughly researched and empirically validated therapeutic models, EFT views individual functioning and relationship distress through an attachment lens. Research studies find that after treatment with EFT, 70-75% of couples move from distress to recovery and 90% of couples show significant improvement. Because of its emphasis on emotion, nurturing and secure connection, EFT offers an alternative to more technically-oriented evidence-based treatments. The principles of EFT can be applied to individuals and families, as well as couples.

All human beings are driven by an instinctive need for connection

I have been profoundly influenced by Attachment Theory, which posits that all human beings are driven by an instinctive need for connection – an idea supported by recent findings in neurobiological research. We do not develop or thrive as separate entities. Rather, we become who we are within important relationships, and we make sense of our environment through our experiences with others. Prizing human connection can seem counterintuitive in a culture that values independence, self-sufficiency, and individual achievement above all else. Though each of us has felt the unique pain of isolation and disconnection, we often doubt ourselves for having this natural human need to connect.

I see individuals within the framework of their important relationships, past and present. I work to strengthen connections and promote healing both within and between individuals. As an emotionally-focused therapist, I view emotions as a rich and meaningful source of information about our selves and our relationships, an impetus for new awareness and a catalyst for growth and change. I trust the inherent wisdom of emotional experience, and the power of emotional responses to enhance intelligence and learning, spur you toward action, organize key relationships and facilitate the development of new narratives in your life.

EFT draws on the basic principle that we cannot move on from a place where we have never arrived. Until we have reclaimed disowned experience, we cannot change or be changed by that experience. Therapy provides a valuable opportunity to experience aspects of ourselves we have not consciously felt, or may have previously disclaimed, suppressed, or pushed away. Emotionally-focused therapy is not a process of learning about emotions, but a process whereby discovery and change emerge as a result of new emotional experiences in the safety of the therapy session.

I would love to talk to you about how I might be able to help you.
Please contact me for a free 15 minute consultation.

Schedule Appointment