My approach

I work with adults and couples navigating the emotional and relational impact of health changes, trauma, loss, and identity disruption. Drawing on my experience in psychosocial oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, along with advanced training in Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy, Pain Reprocessing Therapy, attachment, trauma, and family systems, I offer a thoughtful place to make sense of what has happened and begin moving toward greater safety, connection, and vitality.

Many of the patterns that bring people to therapy began as intelligent attempts to survive, preserve connection, or create a sense of safety. You may have learned to hide vulnerable feelings, anticipate the needs of others, remain relentlessly capable, or disconnect from parts of yourself that felt too painful or unsafe to experience. These responses are not personal failures. They are forms of protection.

At another point in your life, they may have helped you function, succeed, care for others, or withstand circumstances that felt overwhelming. Over time, however, the same strategies can become exhausting. They may appear as anxiety, depression, insomnia, perfectionism, chronic stress, emotional numbness, relationship conflict, or a persistent sense that you are living at a distance from yourself.

My approach is collaborative, relational, trauma-informed, and grounded in family systems, attachment theory, somatic awareness, and modern neuroscience. Rather than focusing only on symptom management, we explore how your emotions, relationships, body, history, identity, and cultural context interact.

Together, we work to understand not only what is happening, but why your system learned to respond in the ways it does. This creates space for new emotional and relational experiences—ones that can support greater internal safety, flexibility, and choice. Within that exploration, many people discover something surprising – alongside pain, there is often wisdom, resourcefulness, and intuition. The same parts of you that learned how to survive may also hold the seeds for healing.

Therapy with me is not about forcing change or pushing through pain. It is about becoming more deeply understood, both by another person and by yourself, so that change can emerge from a place of compassion rather than criticism.

Chronic pain, illness, infertility, loss, or a frightening medical experience can change far more than your health. It may alter how you experience your body, how you understand yourself, and how connected you feel to the people you love.

You may be grieving the life you expected, struggling to trust your body, or trying to hold work and relationships together while carrying fear, exhaustion, or uncertainty. As a couple, you may find yourselves divided between caregiving and independence, closeness and withdrawal, hope and grief.

Individual Therapy

I work with adults who want to move beyond simply surviving and begin living with a greater sense of connection, meaning, and aliveness.

You may have become highly skilled at functioning while struggling internally. Perhaps you manage work, relationships, or family responsibilities well, yet feel anxious, depleted, disconnected, or uncertain about who you are beneath the roles you perform.

Early relationships, trauma, health challenges, cultural expectations, stigma, or repeated experiences of not being fully seen can shape how we learn to move through the world. You may have adapted by becoming smaller, more accommodating, more self-reliant, or more responsible for the emotions of others. You may overfunction, strive for perfection, avoid asking for help, or keep important parts of yourself hidden to preserve belonging.

These patterns often carry both pain and wisdom. They reveal what you learned was necessary to remain safe, connected, or accepted. In our work, all parts of you are welcome—especially those that have felt wounded, isolated, ashamed, or misunderstood. Together, we slow these patterns down and explore the needs, fears, and protective intentions beneath them.

Therapy becomes a place to develop a different relationship with your emotions, your body, and yourself. Rather than organizing your life around avoiding rejection, pain, conflict, or vulnerability, you can begin responding with greater steadiness and freedom.

Chronic Pain, Illness, and Medical Trauma

Living with persistent pain or illness can be profoundly isolating. You may feel as though your body has become unpredictable or unsafe. You may be caught between wanting others to understand and not wanting to be defined by your health. Medical appointments, uncertain diagnoses, treatment experiences, or previous dismissals may have left you feeling frightened, mistrustful, or disconnected from your own intuition.

Health changes can also affect identity, work, sexuality, relationships, spirituality, and your sense of the future. Even when those around you are supportive, you may feel alone with the full emotional weight of what has happened.

My clinical training at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute included working in psychosocial oncology with individuals, couples, and families facing serious illness. This experience shaped my ability to remain present with uncertainty, grief, fear, caregiving, changes in the body, and the existential questions that often emerge during illness.

I understand that healing does not always mean returning to who you were before. Sometimes it means developing a new relationship with your body, your limitations, your needs, and the life that is possible now.

I also have advanced training and certification in Pain Reprocessing Therapy, an evidence-based approach for persistent pain that may be maintained or intensified by learned neural pathways and nervous-system threat responses.

Pain Reprocessing Therapy does not suggest that pain is imagined. Pain is always real. The work involves helping the brain and nervous system interpret physical sensations with greater safety, while addressing the emotional and relational patterns that may reinforce fear, vigilance, and symptom persistence.

Together, we may explore:

• Fear of symptoms, movement, or physical sensations
• Medical trauma and mistrust of the body
• The relationship between stress, emotion, and pain
• Grief associated with lost abilities or an altered future
• Perfectionism, overresponsibility, and difficulty resting
• The impact of pain or illness on intimacy and relationships
• Reconnecting with meaningful activities and parts of life that have become smaller

This is a collaborative and emotionally engaged process. Our goal is not simply to suppress symptoms, but to help you experience greater safety in your body, confidence in your capacity to respond, and freedom to participate more fully in your life.

Couples Therapy

When pain, illness, trauma, infertility, caregiving, or loss enters a relationship, both partners are affected.

One of you may reach for conversation, reassurance, or closeness while the other tries to remain steady by withdrawing, problem-solving, or focusing on practical responsibilities. One partner may feel unseen in their suffering while the other feels frightened, helpless, or unable to do enough. Over time, these understandable responses can become a painful cycle.

You may argue about responsibilities, emotional support, sex, medical decisions, or how much space the health concern should occupy in your lives. The partner experiencing symptoms may feel like a burden. The caregiving partner may feel guilty for having needs of their own. Both of you may miss the relationship you had before and feel uncertain about how to find one another again.

I use Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy to help partners slow these cycles down and understand the attachment needs and protective responses beneath them. Rather than deciding who is right, we explore what happens between you when fear, grief, loneliness, or vulnerability enters the room. Couples often discover that beneath criticism, withdrawal, overfunctioning, or defensiveness is a shared longing to feel close, valued, understood, and safe.

I can help you understand and interrupt the recurring conflict cycles that keep pulling you apart, even when you are both trying to protect the relationship. Together, we create space to speak more openly about fear, grief, pain, and uncertainty, including the vulnerable feelings that may be difficult to express without becoming defensive, overwhelmed, or withdrawn.

We can also explore how illness, stress, caregiving, or other life changes have affected intimacy, sexuality, and physical connection. Therapy can help you find a more sustainable balance between caregiving and partnership, so that neither person becomes defined solely by being the one who needs care or the one who provides it.

As you begin expressing your needs without blame and responding without withdrawing, emotional safety and trust can gradually be rebuilt. The goal is to create a relationship that can hold both difficulty and connection—one in which you can face painful experiences together while continuing to feel valued, supported, and emotionally close.

Therapy for Men

Many men have learned that being dependable means remaining composed, self-sufficient, and in control. You may have been encouraged to solve problems rather than speak about fear, grief, loneliness, dependency, or shame. These expectations can make it difficult to reach for support—even when something inside you feels overwhelmed.

You may notice yourself shutting down during conflict, becoming irritable instead of vulnerable, immersing yourself in work, or feeling uncertain about how to communicate what you need. Health concerns, infertility, relationship strain, caregiving, ageing, or loss may challenge the ways you have learned to understand strength and identity.

Therapy offers a space to become more emotionally available without losing your sense of competence or autonomy. We can work toward a broader and more sustaining experience of strength—one that includes vulnerability, connection, and the ability to receive care.

Health Professionals and Caregivers

When you are accustomed to caring for others, it can be difficult to acknowledge the impact that responsibility has had on you. Healthcare professionals and caregivers often carry experiences that do not fit neatly into ordinary conversation: repeated exposure to suffering, impossible decisions, anticipatory grief, moral distress, emotional exhaustion, or the expectation that they should remain capable regardless of what they have witnessed.

You may be able to function while feeling increasingly numb, irritable, isolated, or depleted. You may struggle to shift out of vigilance or feel guilty for having limits.

I offer a space where you do not have to remain the composed or knowledgeable person in the room. Together, we can attend to what you have carried, reconnect with your own needs, and create a more sustainable relationship with care, responsibility, and vulnerability.

LGBTQIA+ Affirming Therapy

As a member of the LGBTQIA+ community, I am committed to offering an affirming space for queer individuals and couples. Your identity will never be treated as a symptom or problem to solve. At the same time, you may want space to explore how identity, relationships, embodiment, family, culture, health, and belonging intersect.

You may be navigating coming out, changing relationships, family rejection, internalized stigma, gender expectations, medical experiences, fertility decisions, ageing, grief, or the complexity of building a life that feels genuinely your own. I bring both professional experience and lived understanding to this work. Therapy can become a place where you do not have to translate or defend essential parts of yourself before attending to what hurts.

My Background

I hold a Master of Social Work from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts from Middlebury College in International and Global Studies.

I completed my clinical training at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, where I worked in psychosocial oncology, supporting individuals, couples, and families facing serious medical illness. This work profoundly shaped my approach as a therapist. Sitting with people in moments of vulnerability, uncertainty, and loss deepened my understanding of the existential questions that often arise during times of suffering—questions about identity, meaning, purpose, embodiment, and grief. I am comfortable engaging these deeper conversations and believe they are often central to healing.

I am also certified in Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT), an evidence-based approach designed to reduce or eliminate neuroplastic pain. This therapy has been shown to help individuals experiencing chronic pain conditions such as fibromyalgia, sciatica, disc herniation, irritable bowel syndrome, vestibular conditions, and chronic fatigue syndrome.

I am trained in Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy, an evidence-based, attachment-based model that supports couples to create lasting change in the way they communicate, connect, respond, and repair.

As a member of the LGBTQIA+ community, I am committed to creating an affirming therapeutic space where queer individuals and couples can explore identity, belonging, relationships, and the unique strengths and questions that emerge from LGBTQIA+ lived experiences.