Through my years of studying psychology and non-religious spirituality, what I have come to learn is that a great deal of human suffering comes from our identification with our minds and our aversion to difficult emotions.

We often seek therapy because we are struggling with our mind. It often generates thoughts that make us feel anxious or depressed and we feel completely controlled by it. And the desire is to “stop thinking that way” and we can get quite creative in the ways that we try. Addiction to phone, television, gym, substances. Never allowing yourself to stop and pause in life out of fear of the thoughts that will come up if you slow down. Trying to think “positive thoughts”. Unfortunately, while these methods provide excellent temporary relief, they never give long-lasting results.

Without realizing it, we spend much of our life chasing pleasure and avoiding pain. And really what this means is that we want pleasurable emotions and do not want painful emotions. And so we do whatever it takes to achieve both, and in the meantime, we ironically tend to be quite unhappy with life.

My core goal as a therapist is to help my clients be freed of this struggle with their mind and emotions. I help my clients learn how to relate to them differently. What we don’t realize is that we have a relationship with our thoughts and emotions. And it is in this relationship that you find freedom. So, while you may initially have had a relationship to your thoughts and emotions such that you clung on to positive ones and shoved down negative ones, what I hope to help you with is to welcome all of them on the premise that you don’t have to act on any thought or emotion that you don’t want to. That, actually, while you cannot control what thoughts or emotions show up in you, you can control which you give power to and act on. And that’s the freedom!

 With this core goal in mind, I utilize various evidence-based techniques to assist in achieving this goal depending on what is needed at the time. My techniques are primarily rooted in Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR), Brainspotting, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Internal Family Systems (IFS), and non-religious spirituality. To learn more about each of these models, please refer to the page “Therapy Approaches”.