A bit about my philosophy/grounding beliefs/vibe in how I approach this wild, beautiful, and weird work that is mental health therapy.
I believe in the healing potentials of a safe and supportive relationship, and this is what I want to cultivate with each of my clients.
It’s important I collaborate with you around your wishes and hopes, ideally creating a space where you feel empowered and as much a facilitator of your progress as I am. A phrase borrowed from my body-based training is that I offer “assisted self-discovery” in my sessions with folks. Working with you, in all your wisdom and with all the goods you bring, is what gives me joy in this work.
I’m a good match for you if you’re interested in connecting more to your body, if you’ve found just talking in therapy isn’t quite doing it for you, and/or if you’d like to try a different approach in learning about yourself. Antiracist, anti-oppressive, and LGBTQIA+ affirming therapy is an ongoing practice in which I am fully committed to. I use my training and experience with trauma-focused CBT, mindfulness, and somatic-informed practices in my approach with clients. I have completed Level 1 of the Hakomi Mindful Somatic Psychotherapy training, which is a body-based practice that uses mindfulness to connect to our unconscious in order to see long-term healing happen. I use this training a lot! So if you’d like to get more acquainted with it, feel free to check out their website here.
Folks and experiences I feel are solidly in my wheelhouse:
- Depression and anxiety issues
- Complex or developmental trauma
- LGBTQIA+ folks
- Folks in helping or healing roles (first-responders, health care workers, activists, educators etc)
A note about AI: I am committed to providing all my assessments, therapy work, and burnout facilitation without the use of any generative AI (the term most commonly used for scribe-like products that produce text or visuals based on prompted inputs and used for planning, writing, and editing). I feel strongly about this decision for three reasons: 1) because I want to protect your information and data, 2) I understand it is exactly my expertise and clinical conception that you are seeking and paying for and 3) I want to honor the importance of this human-to-human art. While technology can be really helpful, I hesitate to build my work and processes around something that misses the nuances of being human, tools that may dull my intuition and creativity over time. I want to keep my cognitive and mastery skills as intact and sharp as possible,and generative AI has been proven to slow the cognitive activation of its users over time. And as AI continues to grow out of its early stages, we are still figuring out and regulating the ways in which data input into these systems are being stored, accessed, and reiterated on a widespread scale. I take your data and privacy rights incredibly serious, and don’t feel that we’re at a safe-enough place yet with the use of AI and protected healthcare information.
I say this to also highlight what goes into my pricing and fees–my fees are not only about the time you spend with me, but also captures the time and effort I spend on creating strategies and resources, documenting our sessions, and/or diagnosing and writing up assessment results without the use of AI-assisted technology.
I hold both virtual and in-person sessions from my Chapel Hill office.
