Specialities

I specialize in evidence-based therapy for anxiety, trauma, chronic stress and burnout, health and caregiver-related concerns, healthcare and medical stress or trauma, and ADHD and executive functioning challenges.

My approach emphasizes identifying the underlying cognitive, emotional, and somatic patterns that maintain distress, rather than treating symptoms in isolation. Below is an overview of how I address each area in therapy.

Anxiety

Anxiety is the brain’s threat-detection system doing what it is designed to do: protect and ensure survival (which includes decreasing distress). At times, this system can become overly activated or stuck in patterns that are no longer as helpful as they may have been in the past. When this happens, anxiety may show up as persistent worry or thought spirals, avoidance of certain situations, excessive reassurance-seeking, or heightened vigilance in the body and mind.

Here is how we would approach anxiety in therapy:

❋ Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is an evidence-based approach that helps people change how they relate to anxious thoughts, emotions, and body sensations. Rather than trying to eliminate anxiety, ACT focuses on increasing psychological flexibility. Psychological flexibility is the ability to notice anxiety without being driven by it, and to make choices guided by values rather than fear. You can learn more about this approach here.

❋ Choice, Control, and Self-Kindness

We work together to clarify what is within your control or influence and what is not, and to develop effective responses to both. This may include problem-solving, shifting how you relate to thoughts or emotions, practicing acceptance when change is not possible, or noticing when patterns of struggle are keeping anxiety in place. Throughout this process, we emphasize self-neutrality or self-kindness rather than self-criticism.

❋ Recognizing and Working with Avoidance

Avoidance is a common and understandable response to anxiety, even when it creates long-term limitations. Therapy focuses on identifying avoidance patterns with curiosity rather than judgment and gradually building skills that support increased agency, flexibility, and tolerance of discomfort when doing so aligns with your goals.

❋ Considering Trauma-Related Factors

For some people, anxiety is closely connected to traumatic stress or past experiences that continue to affect the nervous system. When this is the case, trauma-informed or trauma-focused approaches may be appropriate and can be integrated into treatment as needed (see below).

Trauma

Trauma, or traumatic stress, refers to the ways the body and mind respond to experiences that were overwhelming, inescapable, or exceeded our capacity to cope at the time. Not everyone develops traumatic stress after a traumatic event, but when it does occur, it often reflects lasting changes in how we understand ourselves, other people, and the world. These changes may have once been protective, but over time they can contribute to distress, rigid beliefs, emotional reactivity, or patterns of avoidance that no longer serve us.

Here are some of the evidence-based approaches I use when trauma has been part of your life:

❋ Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a trauma-focused therapy that helps the brain process distressing memories in a more adaptive way. Through a structured protocol that includes bilateral stimulation, EMDR supports memories becoming less emotionally charged and more clearly experienced as events from the past rather than ongoing threats. You can learn more about it here.

❋ Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT)
Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) is a structured, evidence-based trauma treatment that focuses on identifying and examining unhelpful beliefs shaped by trauma. Therapy supports clients in understanding how trauma has affected their views of themselves, others, and the world, and in developing more balanced and flexible ways of making meaning so trauma memories are less likely to drive shame, fear, or rigid patterns. You can learn more about it here.

❋ Internal Family Systems (IFS)
Internal Family Systems (IFS) is an evidence-informed approach that understands trauma as impacting different “parts” of a person’s internal system. Rather than trying to eliminate symptoms, IFS helps clients relate to protective and wounded parts with curiosity and compassion, supporting greater internal safety, integration, and self-leadership over time. You can learn more about it here.

❋ Prolonged Exposure (PE)
Prolonged Exposure (PE) is a trauma-focused therapy that addresses avoidance by gradually and intentionally approaching trauma memories and safe, avoided situations. With careful pacing and support, this process helps the brain relearn that the danger is no longer present, reducing fear responses and increasing confidence in everyday functioning. You can learn more about it here.

Stress, chronic stress & burnout

Stress becomes chronic when the body remains in a prolonged state of activation without enough time, space, and permission for recovery. Burnout often develops in roles or environments where rest, limits, or emotional honesty are constrained, unsupported, or repeatedly overridden. Over time, this can lead to exhaustion, detachment, reduced effectiveness, and a sense of disconnection from meaning or self.

Here is how we would approach chronic stress and burnout in therapy:

❋ Stress Management

Therapy focuses on helping people understand how stress shows up and functions in their body and nervous system, and how prolonged activation is maintained over time. We work on practical regulation skills that support recovery and resilience, rather than pushing through or overriding limits. The goal is not to eliminate stress, but to help the body return to safe-enough states more reliably and with less effort.

❋ Systems Thinking

Chronic stress and burnout do not occur in a vacuum. We look beyond individual coping to examine the systems people are operating within, such as workplaces, caregiving roles, family dynamics, cultural expectations, and power structures. This helps ensure stress is not framed as a personal failure, and supports clearer discernment around where systems may need to change, where limits are possible, and where grief or acceptance may be required.

❋ Values and Meaning

Burnout often erodes a person’s connection to meaning. Therapy supports reconnecting with what matters underneath exhaustion, obligation, or survival mode, and clarifying values that can guide decisions even when circumstances are imperfect. This sense of direction and integrity can reduce vulnerability to burnout by aligning effort with meaning rather than pressure or fear.

❋ Boundaries

We work on developing boundaries that are realistic, values-based, and sustainable, rather than all-or-nothing or driven by guilt. This includes learning to notice overextension earlier, tolerate discomfort when limits are set, and navigate repair or adjustment in relationships without sacrificing self-respect or long-term well-being.

Health and caregiver-related issues

Living with illness or health conditions, whether your own or someone else’s, often brings ongoing uncertainty, grief, vigilance, and stress. Caregivers frequently carry sustained emotional, logistical, and relational responsibility while minimizing their own needs, which can increase vulnerability to burnout, anxiety, and emotional depletion over time.

Here is how we would approach illness- and caregiving-related challenges in therapy:

❋ Ambiguous Loss and Grief

Many of the losses associated with illness and caregiving are ongoing and lack clear endings, recognition, or closure. Therapy focuses on naming and processing these layered losses, making space for grief without pathologizing it or rushing toward acceptance before it is emotionally possible. This approach supports grief as a natural response to ongoing change rather than something to “resolve.”

❋ Empowerment

When illness or caregiving limits choice, therapy supports rebuilding a sense of agency in realistic and sustainable ways. This includes strengthening informed decision-making, self-trust, and advocacy for needs within complex medical, family, or institutional systems. Empowerment here is not about controlling the uncontrollable, but about clarity, confidence, and effectiveness in how you respond.

❋ Burnout Prevention

Caregiving often involves invisible labor, over-responsibility, guilt, and limited access to rest or resources. We work proactively to identify early signs of depletion and overextension, and to develop rhythms of effort and recovery that are sustainable over time. This includes addressing patterns that drive people to push past their limits even when the cost is high.

❋ Living With Uncertainty

Ongoing uncertainty can keep the nervous system in a state of vigilance. Therapy supports strengthening the capacity to live with uncertainty without remaining in constant threat mode, reducing the likelihood that chronic stress compounds into trauma over time. This work may include nervous system support, meaning-making, and practical strategies for staying oriented to the present rather than bracing for the worst beyond what is helpful for planning ahead.

Healthcare & medical stress or trauma

Medical stress and trauma can arise from frightening diagnoses, invasive or painful procedures, and loss of control for patients, as well as from repeated exposure to crisis, moral pressure, and constrained decision-making for healthcare workers operating within complex systems. These experiences can affect the nervous system, sense of safety, trust in one’s body or judgment, and ability to recover even after the immediate medical event has passed.

Here is how we would approach medical stress and trauma in therapy:

❋ Reclaiming Agency

Medical experiences often reduce a person’s sense of choice or control. Therapy focuses on identifying where agency can be realistically restored, including rebuilding trust in your perceptions, strengthening decision-making, and clarifying options within real-world medical, relational, or institutional constraints. This work supports a greater sense of steadiness and self-trust without denying the limits that may still be present.

❋ Trauma Treatment

When symptoms reflect traumatic stress rather than stress alone, evidence-based trauma therapies may be appropriate. This work supports the brain and body in processing what happened so memories and physiological responses become less intrusive and less dominant in the present. Trauma treatment is collaborative, carefully paced, and oriented toward integration rather than simply coping or pushing through.

❋ Burnout Prevention

Ongoing medical stress can lead to burnout when recovery time is limited or repeatedly interrupted. This can affect people living with illness as well as those working within high-pressure healthcare systems. Burnout prevention focuses on effective stress management, clarifying values and boundaries, and building sustainable ways to protect energy and well-being, while acknowledging the systemic realities of healthcare rather than placing responsibility solely on the individual.

❋ Grief Work

Grief commonly follows medical experiences, even when treatment is successful or recovery occurs. Losses may include health, certainty, identity, roles, trust in one’s body, or imagined futures. Grief work creates space to name and process these losses, including ambiguous or ongoing ones, so they are less likely to remain frozen in the body or expressed indirectly as anxiety, numbness, or exhaustion. The goal is not closure, but learning how to carry what has been lost without being consumed by it.

ADHD/ADD & executive functioning

ADHD/ADD and executive functioning challenges affect attention regulation, initiation, planning, working memory, and emotional regulation. Whether you are navigating a new diagnosis in adulthood or processing earlier experiences of growing up with ADHD/ADD, therapy focuses on reducing shame, building practical supports, and helping your brain work with you rather than against you.

Here is how we would approach ADHD/ADD and executive functioning challenges in therapy:

❋ Radical Acceptance

Therapy supports developing an accurate, nonjudgmental understanding of how your brain works, including its strengths and limits. Radical acceptance in this context is not resignation; it is a foundation for effective change. By letting go of the cycle of self-blame or striving to meet unrealistic standards, people are better able to make informed, values-based choices about how they want to live.

❋ Self-Kindness

Many people with ADHD/ADD carry long histories of criticism, shame, or feeling “behind.” Therapy focuses on cultivating a kinder and more realistic relationship with yourself. Self-kindness is not about lowering expectations, but about creating internal safety that supports learning, experimentation, and sustainable change.

❋ Skills Training

Therapy includes practical executive functioning skills tailored to how attention, motivation, and energy operate in ADHD/ADD. This may include support with task initiation, planning, follow-through, time management, and emotional regulation. The focus is on developing usable systems and strategies rather than relying on willpower, perfection, or constant self-monitoring.

❋ Rebuilding Self-Trust

ADHD often erodes trust in one’s own follow-through or judgment. Therapy supports rebuilding self-trust by creating structures that increase the likelihood of success and by noticing patterns of what does and does not work over time. Self-trust grows through repeated, realistic successes rather than pushing harder or trying to become someone else.