WELCOME
I am a licensed psychologist located in Marin County, serving the San Francisco Bay area, the greater Los Angeles area and other parts of California via telehealth.
Background: I received my masters degree in Clinical Psychology from the Chicago School of Professional Psychology in Los Angeles and my doctorate degree in Clinical Psychology from Ryokan College in Venice, CA. I attended internships at The Maple Counseling Center (TMCC) in Beverly Hills, CA and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, CA as a supervisor for Teen Line, a program that provides crisis intervention and prevention, peer counseling, and referrals specifically for adolescents ages 12 to 19. In 2014, I earned the Certificate in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy from the Los Angeles Institute and Society for Psychoanalytic Studies (LAISPS) and I continue to participate in weekly, ongoing psychoanalytic supervision and case consultation. Formerly, I spent over 15 years working in the television industry. From this I gained a sensitivity and deep understanding of the experiences and challenges that professionals struggling to form, excel, and maintain their careers in an often complex and high stress environment. I also provide psychological consultation to entertainment organizations, including The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. I have served on various non-profit boards and committees and am currently serving as Immediate Past President of the Redwood Psychological Association (2022).
Therapy: My practice is centered in psychoanalytic psychotherapy, also described as psychodynamic or relational analytic therapy, with a reparative framework. I work with individual adults, couples, teens and their families. A central tenant of psychoanalytic therapy is that our difficulties emerge as a result of our complex relational history with significant people in our development. I see our work as a collaborative process as compared to a hierarchical structure between doctor and patient found in traditional treatment. We will explore and illuminate the parts of your history that are inhibiting or impairing your current functioning. In other words, we will uncover how the past is currently affecting your present.
My practice has a special emphasis on working with the LGBTQ+ community and particularly those who are transgender, gender expansive, bi-gender or nonbinary/gender nonconforming. A primary focus of mine is establishing a safe space to deeply explore and affirm the client’s core gender and/or sexual identity and expression, which for some can feel like a continually evolving process. I currently work with those who are in various stages of transitioning (and beyond) and offer consultation to clinicians serving TGNB clients.
A Safe Space For Couples: As a couples therapist, I work toward a full understanding of each person’s feelings and experience in being with their partner. I help each person effectively communicate their feelings and experience in new and constructive ways. I also work to illuminate how each person’s relational history shapes how we think, feel, and behave in our current relationship. The result of this work is that each person gains a new and more comprehensive understanding of their partner and themselves “in relationship”. Individuals who feel understood, validated and respected in their relationship are in position to learn and grow with their partners. This leads to a deeper, more vitalized engagement with one another through curiosity, playfulness, and passion.
