Services
- Individual
- Adolescent/Teen
- Group
About My Clients
At Self Space I work with individuals who are healing from past traumas; who are looking to recover a sense of wholeness in the face of depression and demoralization; and those working to get a handle on anxiety. I am also interested in questions around gender, particularly as they manifest in issues of anger and intimacy in male-identified persons and in working with people grappling with queerness and/or gender. I'm also highly sensitive to the stress of political and economic instability.
My Background and Approach
I was trained in the existential-phenomenological tradition of psychotherapy, a humanistic form of psychology that emphasizes the central role of relationships both in life and in therapy. I believe that relationships are the most important part of life: relationships with others, with ourselves and our bodies, with the varied roles we all fill, and with times and places. My approach has also been influenced by contemporary research on trauma, polyvagal theory, and scientific approaches that appreciate the role our bodies play in emotion and healing. I believe there is a time and place for all of these various perspectives on healing and growth.
My Personal Beliefs and Interests
I strongly believe it is vital to foreground the relational, social, and political quality of human life. All of us must navigate complex family relationships that are embedded in a larger social-political framework. Nothing happens in a vacuum. Many of life's difficulties emerge in the process of navigating these enormously complex institutions that organize our lives. The scale of these institutions can sometimes leave us feeling confused, alienated, and isolated. I think that healing sometimes (not always) means accounting for these larger social-political pressures. I have thus worked with populations in exceptional social-political circumstances: members of the intellectually disabled community, and individuals court mandated to receive mental health services. These have been formative experiences. I am therefore highly attuned to social and political factors in mental health and invite conversation about race, gender, class, sexuality, and related social-political issues.