I work with individuals, couples, and groups to address critical issues affecting their lives and happiness.
My intention is to help my clients develop their own awareness in order to become proactive in their emotional wellness. The journey begins by creating a secure space where you can slow down and gain insight into your thoughts and feelings. Together, we’ll explore how mindfulness, self-compassion, and self-acceptance is a pathway to happiness and peace in your life.
Anxiety/Depression Issues
Anxiety disorders are quite different from the “normal” nervousness and anxiety that all of us feel from time to time. Anxiety disorders can be very scary and, at times, paralyzing. Physical symptoms can include shortness of breath, increased heart rate, tightness in the chest, tension throughout the body, dizziness, tingling and numbness in the hands and body, nauseousness, and fear of being out of control.
I treat all types of anxiety issues including generalized anxiety disorders, panic disorders, and phobias.
Depression usually involves a low mood and sadness at a moderate level. Clinical depression can feel like a black, enveloping cloud that descends into one’s life and makes everyday activities seem overwhelming and pointless. Often, it is hard to see any hope of things getting better.
Depression is a highly treatable disorder, and therapy can play a valuable role in helping clients understand the cause and how to help manage the feelings. I work with clients who are experiencing different types of depression, and I have been effective in helping those who have felt “stuck” in their depression for long periods of their lives.
Relationship Issues
Healthy relationships are paramount to a happy life. So why are human relationships so challenging and complicated? Relationship problems arise out of a universal core wounding around love that affects not only our personal relationships but the quality of life in our world as a whole. Help and awareness begin when we learn to embrace our humanness, and to appreciate the imperfections of our relationships as a path to express love and to be loved. At the core of all grievances are deep pain and grief about loss of connection. If we never fully, consciously grieve this hurt, it becomes stored in our mind and body. I guide clients on the path to healing by helping them free up these stored feelings about loss of connection, so that they can be fully experienced, processed, and moved through.
Couples Therapy
Intimate relationships thrive when each person feels seen and heard, and receives tolerance from their partner. Tolerance gives birth to intimacy. Couples therapy can strengthen the connection by improving listening and empathy skills, learning how to process feelings to work through conflict, and keeping healthy boundaries and separation to avoid being enmeshed. The work includes each person discovering what’s getting in the way of having the relationship they desire, as well as learning how to repair ruptures by processing feelings of hurt, disappointment, and anger to deepen emotional and physical intimacy. Modalities used: Mindfulness, Gottman Method, and Attachment Styles.
Group Therapy
Group therapy is the optimal way to learn how to be more relational, and to feel more at ease processing thoughts and feelings in the moment. Group therapy offers a unique opportunity to explore family of origin communication patterns, behaviors, and coping strategies that are no longer helpful in current relationships. Group therapy helps bring awareness to changing these patterns, which leads to understanding and transformative growth. Many people who struggle with any level of social anxiety can benefit with the support and guidance of the Group Therapist.
Group therapy can offer a secure place to experience emotional growth by learning how to process all emotions with other group members. This process builds the confidence to use new communication skills and awareness to develop a renewed sense of agency and possibility in all relationships outside of the group. Group is a place where each member is there for their own growth, as well as the growth of the group as a whole. Experiencing yourself putting your needs and desires into words, in the group community, creates a space in which you feel supported, and where you learn to connect more deeply in relationships.
Relational Intelligence Consulting/Life Coaching
Relational Intelligence is a combination of emotional and ethical intelligence. This involves the ability to be aware of and understand our own and others’ emotions, values, interests, and desires in order to mindfully reflect on them, and to use this information to guide our actions and behavior with respect to people. It’s the ability to connect with others within professional and group settings and to establish mutual trust. It’s also learning how to stay connected with others in situations of conflict or breach of trust. People who learn to genuinely connect and develop relational intelligence become more open, more trusting, and have strength in their listening and empathy skills.
Life Coaching is helpful when you have specific goals and want a professional who will hold you accountable and provide support by identifying the path to get there. Life Coaching is a place where you explore mindsets and behaviors that may be keeping you stuck, and shifting patterns to change them. Life Coaching is designed to help you achieve specific outcomes in your life.
Sexual Wellness
Accepting and making peace with our bodies is the beginning of one of the best relationships we can ever have: our relationship with ourselves.
I work with clients of all genders and sexual orientations who want to feel more pleasure and joy in their sex lives, and help them gain a greater understanding of how self-love and mindfulness practices lead to greater freedom to experience pleasure in one’s body. Sexual wellness begins with trusting we are all sexually whole, even when we’re not feeling that way in the moment. Sexual pleasure and well being can be impacted by feelings of stress, anxiety, and or depression, as well as how we're feeling about our body, ourself, and the level of trust we feel with a partner. What ever difficulty you’re experiencing, it’s important to trust that you have everything inside of you to feel safe and happy.
Please contact me if you’d like to talk more about my approach, or how it can support your effort toward living a healthy, peaceful life.
Serving the areas of Chicago, IL and Denver and Boulder, CO.