Areas of Focus

 

I’ve worked with people in many mental health contexts and across the spectrum of human experience. As my practice has evolved, though, I have come to focus on certain populations and experiences. This doesn’t mean that I never work with those outside of these groups! These are simply special areas of practice where I have extensive experience, where I’ve done more research and continuing education, and where my own lived experience gives me some particular insight.

 

Empowering Women to Live More Fully

What do you tell yourself when you mess up? I suck. How could I be so stupid? This is why everybody treats me the way they do. Or maybe: Great, there I go again, ruining things. Way to go, genius.

  • Whose words are those? Sure, they’re yours now, but where did you learn to talk to yourself that way? Is that how your caregivers talked to themselves? To you?

    Life is too hard already, and far too precious, to spend it hating ourselves, or even grudgingly or conditionally accepting only the most “perfect” parts of ourselves.

    What if you could know yourself deeply, the good, the painful, and the meh, and just . . . be okay with what you know? What if you could feel compassion for the most painful, even the most hurtful parts of yourself? What if you connected to an enduring, resilient sense of wellbeing that could persist, no matter your circumstances?

    You can get there. I can help. Reach out today for a free video consultation.

 
 


The Unique Needs of
Helping Professionals


“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.”

―Fred Rogers

Mister Rogers’ words have gotten a lot of air time in recent years as his life’s work has enjoyed a kind of renaissance (for the record, I have always been a Mister Rogers super fan and I have the autographed photo of him to prove it!).

While his words about looking for helpers are both true and useful, they have come to be almost a cliché in recent years, when disaster after disaster leaves us looking around frantically to find the helpers in our current crisis. Only very recently has any attention been drawn to the fact that society’s helpers are getting pretty worn out.

 

Who’s Helping the Helpers?

As my practice has evolved, I’ve found myself drawn more and more to work with others in helping professions. Over the years I have become increasingly interested in working with educators, nurses and other medical providers, activists, therapists, and ministers to recover from the burnout that plagues our professions.

 All of us in these fields come to this work by way of our own painful experiences, including our trauma. It’s essential to understand how that pain shows up in our work lives both in adaptive ways that enhance that work and in ways that contribute to our feeling exhausted, demoralized, and ineffective. In therapy with people who work with people, we explore the dynamics that shaped you into someone deeply committed to others and consider how those dynamics are serving you—or not serving you—today, and how you might renegotiate your relationship with what once motivated you.


My therapeutic work with those who work in these fields focuses on:

·      Burnout recovery and prevention

·      Balancing the demands of intense work with a desire to live a whole and fulfilling life outside of work

·      Building longevity in your career

·      Expanding deeper and more compassionate self-awareness

·      Cultivating a grounded, realistic, resilient sense of hope

·      Developing skills for finding meaningful integration of the painful experiences that are often part of this work

Burnout is endemic in our fields, and looming shortages have become immediate crises in the current pandemic as people leave helping professions for less intense and more lucrative jobs. If you went into this kind of work because you’re passionate about it, I want to help you stay in your chosen field in an emotionally sustainable way. Invest in yourself now to cultivate longevity in the crucial work you’ve chosen.

 

Abortion Care Providers

Learn More About the Abortion Care Network

  • Since 2017, I’ve been part of the Provider Resilience Initiative with the Abortion Care Network, a national organization that supports independent abortion care providers. Together with a team of clinical social workers from all over the country, I have worked with independent abortion care providers and those in provider-adjacent roles throughout the United States to build resilience in an increasingly hostile political landscape.

    I’m committed to reproductive justice and to holding a safe space for people to process all their experiences and feelings around reproductive autonomy. No matter what your experience, your story is safe here.