My passion and my work are about helping you thrive regardless of your physical or emotional challenges. You can have a terrific life - even when awful things happen. Sometimes it can be really hard to get there alone.
I know you are a unique individual and that one size does not fit all. My style is interactive, empathic and respectful. My work is grounded in mindfulness and somatic (body) awareness, CBT (Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy), ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy), and psychodynamic therapies - as well as my own life experience.
Your life experience and affinities will be the guide as we work together to find the tools that help untangle your difficult emotions and get you back on track, engaged, and moving forward on your unique life path.
You may have already tried many different things to feel better. I know I did!
My own diagnosis with Multiple Sclerosis (M.S.) several years into my private practice impressed on me the need for informed emotional – in addition to medical – support for anyone contending with such life-altering changes. The focus of my work, education, training, and teaching is to better address this need.
Partial list of my formal training:
Licensed psychotherapist, California MFT#36770 since 2000
MA, Body-Oriented Psychotherapy, California Institute of Integral Studies
BA, Sociology, Williams College
Certified Grief Recovery Specialist®, The Grief Recovery Institute®
Pain Reprocessing Therapy, Alan Gordon (Pain Psychology Center)
Healing at the Edge: Conscious Living, Conscious Dying, Dale Borglum (Living/Dying Project)
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), Osher Center for Integrative Medicine, UCSF, and Commonweal
Bereavement and End-of-Life Care, Zen Hospice Project
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Steven Hayes (University of Nevada, Reno; author, Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life)
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy with David Burns (author, Feeling Good)
Professional memberships and volunteerism include:
National Aids Memorial
National Multiple Sclerosis Society (NMSS)
Crohn's and Colitis Foundation of America (CCFA)
Association for Contextual Behavioral Science (ACBS)
California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists (CAMFT)
The University of California, the Osher Center, CIIS (California Institute of Integral Studies), Spirit Rock, the Institute on Aging, Kaiser Foundation, ACBS (Association for Contextual Behavioral Science), and many other venues provide my ongoing education and training focused on illness, aging, loss, pain, end of life issues, specific disease presentations, research, and evidence-based therapies.
My clients want to feel better about themselves, their bodies, their relationships – better about their lives — and have always been my best teachers as they find their way to a better life than they ever thought possible.