Services

Adults

I collaborate with my patients to create a safe, trusting therapeutic relationship where individuals can explore difficulties, develop deeper understanding, and make meaningful changes toward a more fulfilling life. My integrated approach draws from psychodynamic, interpersonal, mentalization, and mindfulness techniques, always tailored to each patient's unique needs. Together we can address:

• Mood and anxiety concerns

• Life transitions

• Loss and grief

• Relationship dynamics (friendships and romantic partnerships)

• Complex family systems

• Developmental/attachment and relational trauma

Working with Borderline/Narcissistic Dynamics 

I work extensively with patients who grew up with parents on the borderline/narcissism spectrum, or who have found themselves in adult relationships (personal or professional) with individuals showing similar traits. I'm well-versed in the theory, research, and resources surrounding these personality adaptations. We'll explore how to navigate learning skills and emerge from these situations with both safety and sanity intact.

Adolescents

Therapy provides adolescents with a collaborative environment to better understand their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors while promoting flexibility and positive change. Using methods specifically tailored to each teen's needs, we can address:

• Identity development and self-esteem

• School-related stress and academic pressures

• Peer relationships and social challenges

• Family dynamics and independence

• Anxiety and depression

• Trauma and loss

Couples therapy offers a dedicated safe space to repair, reconnect and rebuild. Relationships naturally become strained when couples are stuck in painful patterns.

These patterns often look like repeated conflicts, communication breakdowns, misunderstanding and disconnection as well as mistrust, betrayal or infidelity.

Over time, these experiences can leave both partners feeling hurt, resentful, and alone. Even when there is care and love, couples may find themselves caught in the same conflicts, unable to break free from familiar cycles.

Couples often come to therapy feeling:

• Stuck in the same argument over and over

• Misunderstood, unheard or a lack of trust

• Distant or more like roommates than partners

• Hurt or resentful from past conflicts that never feel resolved

• Disconnected emotionally or physically

• Unsure how to navigate parenting, family, or life transitions together

How couples therapy can help:

Be seen. Heard. Understood.

Couples therapy provides a safe and supportive space where both partners can openly share their thoughts, feelings, and experiences - and feel genuinely heard and understood. Together, we slow down the patterns that keep you stuck and work to better understand the emotions, needs, and vulnerabilities beneath the conflict.

Through guided reflection, deep listening, and new ways of communicating, couples develop greater understanding, compassion, and trust.

What changes in couples therapy?

Healthy relationships are not free from conflict. Rather, they are built on the ability to repair, reconnect, and navigate challenges together.

As therapy progresses, couples often experience:

• Fewer repetitive arguments and more productive conversations

• Greater understanding of one another's needs, emotions, and perspectives

• Increased trust, emotional safety, closeness and intimacy

• Less defensiveness, criticism, and reactivity during conflict

• Greater ability to repair after misunderstandings and disagreements

• Greater confidence navigating parenting, family and life’s challenges together

• A stronger sense of connection and partnership

About Polyamory & ENM

I offer a genuinely non-judgmental, knowledgeable space for consensual non-monogamy — polyamory, open relationships, relationship anarchy, and everything in between. I support you and your partner(s) build structures, communication, and boundaries that actually reflect your values, without defaulting to mono-normative assumptions.

• Navigating jealousy, compersion, and new-relationship-energy dynamics

• Building agreements and boundaries that fit your relationships

• Coming out as polyamorous or ENM to family, friends, or metamours

• Time management and hierarchy questions

• Communication between partners and metamours

• Processing breakups or relationship changes within a polycule

But what is EMDR and how does it work?

EMDR therapy is a structured psychotherapy that primarily focuses on treating individuals who have experienced distressing, traumatic events. The idea behind EMDR is those traumatic memories, when unprocessed, can become “stuck” in the brain, leading to a wide array of emotional and psychological difficulties, said clinical psychologist Steven Silver, PhD, who coauthored the book Light in the Heart of Darkness: EMDR and the Treatment of War and Terrorism Survivors‍ ‍(opens in a new window).

Patients who have experienced trauma often find themselves going back to thoughts of past events and experiencing disturbances, Silver said. These unresolved memories can manifest in the form of anxiety, depression, PTSD, and other trauma-related conditions.

“The brain, among other things, is always trying to solve problems,” he said. For someone experiencing PTSD, these could be questions such as ‘All my friends are dead; why am I still alive?’ “This is the kind of question that the mind will insist be answered. So, it keeps going back to the event, whatever it was. But if it can’t find the answer, or can’t accept the answer, it doesn’t abandon the search if the question is considered important enough. It keeps going back. This effort to return to the event can result in recurrent dreams, intrusive memories, and flashbacks.”

EMDR addresses the ongoing PTSD patients experience by relying on the brain’s natural capacity to heal and process traumatic experiences. During an EMDR session, the therapist guides the patient through a series of standardized procedures designed to stimulate bilateral brain activity connecting left brain and right brain to create a new neuropathway. So, the ultimate goal is for the emotional charge around the traumatic event to go away.

One Foot in the Present, One Foot in the Past: Understanding E.M.D.R., Blum, D (2022, September 19).The New York Times

Types of Trauma and PTSD I Treat

As a trauma therapist, I specialize in treating all forms of trauma and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Trauma affects each person differently, and I provide compassionate, evidence-based treatment tailored to your unique experience and healing journey.

• Complex PTSD (C-PTSD) – Results from prolonged, repeated trauma often occurring in childhood or within relationships where escape wasn’t possible. You might struggle with emotional regulation, difficulty trusting others, and a disrupted sense of self beyond typical PTSD symptoms.

• Childhood Trauma – Traumatic experiences during developmental years including abuse, neglect, witnessing violence, or growing up in chaotic environments. Childhood trauma can affect how you relate to others, regulate emotions, and view yourself well into adulthood.

• Sexual Assault and Abuse Trauma – Trauma resulting from sexual violence, assault, or abuse at any age. Recovery involves processing the trauma, addressing shame and self-blame, rebuilding a sense of safety in your body, and restoring trust in relationships.

• Physical Assault and Violence – Trauma from experiencing or witnessing physical violence, attacks, or life-threatening situations. This can result in hypervigilance, fear responses, and difficulty feeling safe in environments that remind you of the assault.

• Emotional and Psychological Abuse – Ongoing patterns of manipulation, gaslighting, verbal abuse, or emotional control that leave deep psychological wounds. This type of trauma can be particularly confusing because there may be no physical evidence, yet the impact is profound.

Along with many other types/forms of trauma and PTSD you may be struggling with on a day-to-day basis.

I started my career 25 years ago working in the addiction/recovery community. For 10+ years I worked in both residential and outpatient treatment facilities with adults and adjudicated adolescents.

While the focus was mostly abstinence, the increase in harm reduction became an important part of this community as well. What I know to be true is that no two journeys with addiction are alike and I work with folks where they are.

When substance use and a mental health disorder occur together, specialized co-occurring disorders treatment—also known as dual diagnosis care—offers the most effective path toward healing. Mental health challenges often contribute to or intensify substance use, creating a cycle that requires compassionate, integrated support.

I understand that meaningful recovery begins when a person acknowledges their relationship with alcohol and/or drugs and commits to receiving support. While detox is often an important first step, lasting recovery usually requires more than medical stabilization alone. True healing involves education, behavioral change, and the development of healthy coping strategies to prevent relapse.

There are various reasons someone might seek therapy for eating disorders. If you're struggling with disordered eating, a complicated relationship with food, an active eating disorder, or are in recovery and need support, then therapy can be beneficial for you. Therapy is an opportunity to have a trained therapist support you in understanding why this difficult relationship exists. It also helps you to develop the tools and strategies that support you in recovery. It can also be an opportunity for you to make sense of the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors associated with an eating disorder and learn how to effectively manage them. 

REASONS TO SEEK THERAPY FOR EATING DISORDERS INCLUDE BUT ARE NOT LIMITED TO THE FOLLOWING:

• Relapsing or intensifying disordered eating behaviors

• Difficulty in maintaining recovery

• Actively engaging in an eating disorder

• Navigating a complicated relationship between food and body image

• Disordered behaviors are impacting your life negatively

• Struggling with body image issues and self-esteem

• Experiencing guilt or shame related to food or eating behaviors

• Having obsessive thoughts and feelings about food, calories, weight, and appearance 

• Extreme weight loss or difficulty with weight gain

• Experiencing depression, anxiety, or other mental health issues in relation to your eating disorder

• Having difficulty regulating emotions or managing stress without turning to disordered eating behaviors

• Experiencing struggles with interpersonal relationships and social situations in relation to food

I fully understand that it can feel like it's you against your own mind and body. I show up to support you as an ally, to accept and support you, not see you through a judgmental lens.

Therapy offers the chance to examine where these eating disordered thoughts, behaviors, and feelings come from and support you in feeling back in control of your behaviors, emotions and overall life.

I also work with folks while they are in outpatient eating disorder programs such as Renfrew, Monte Nido, Balance and hospital outpatient programs etc. I work with existing treatment teams to collaborate on how best to support and provide tools and strategies to break through the cycle of eating disorders.

About LGBTQIA+ Affirming Therapy

LGBTQIA+ affirming therapy is care that understands your identity as a healthy, vital part of who you are  and never the problem to be solved. As an LGBTIA+ provider, I offer relational safety, gender-affirming support, and trauma-informed pride integration so you can move from surviving to thriving, fully yourself.

What it can help with:

• Identity exploration & self-acceptance

• Coming out and relationships
  

• Gender-affirming support & transition
  

• Minority stress, anxiety, and depression
  

• Family, chosen family, and belonging
  

• Healing from identity-based trauma