My approach

For the past 18 years, I have helped individuals and couples understand and heal the deeper emotional, relational, and nervous-system patterns that shape how they experience themselves and one another. My work goes beyond insight alone, supporting change at the level of attachment, emotion, the body, and the nervous system.

The ways we protect ourselves are rarely random. They often develop in response to earlier experiences of rejection, emotional inconsistency, conflict, loss, overwhelm, or having to manage more than we were ready to carry.

You may have learned to preserve connection by becoming highly capable, accommodating, independent, vigilant, or responsible for everyone around you. You may pursue reassurance when you feel distance, withdraw when emotions become intense, or work hard to stay in control when uncertainty feels unsafe. These responses may once have helped you maintain belonging or emotional safety, even if they now leave you feeling exhausted, disconnected, or unable to respond in the ways you would choose.

You may already understand why you respond in certain ways and still find yourself becoming anxious, overwhelmed, self-critical, emotionally reactive, or disconnected when something important feels at risk. In our work, we will look beneath the reactions that are most visible and explore the emotions, fears, longings, and core attachment wounds they are protecting.

We may slow down a familiar interaction, notice what happens in your body as an emotion begins to emerge, or identify the precise moment your nervous system shifts into anxiety, shutdown, defensiveness, or overwhelm. By listening closely to these emotional and somatic responses, we can begin to understand not only what you do, but what your mind and body are trying to protect you from.

This is not only a process of gaining insight. It is an opportunity to experience yourself differently. By working with the emotional and somatic roots of your patterns, you can begin to develop a greater sense of internal safety, remain more connected to yourself during difficult moments, and respond with greater freedom and choice.

I specialize in core attachment wounds, relational trauma, nervous-system regulation, somatic healing, and recurring relationship patterns. I also have particular expertise in supporting individuals and couples through pregnancy, postpartum life, parenthood, perimenopause, and the significant changes these stages can bring to identity, intimacy, emotional regulation, and relationships.

Individual Therapy

Individual therapy offers a space to turn toward the parts of yourself that may have been ignored, criticized, hidden, or shaped around the needs of others.

You may be highly capable, thoughtful, and successful, yet feel unsettled within yourself or repeatedly stuck in relationships. You can often recognize what is happening, but insight alone does not stop the familiar reactions that take over when you feel rejected, criticized, betrayed, overwhelmed, or emotionally alone.

Perhaps you overthink conversations, question your perceptions, or struggle to identify what you genuinely feel and need. You may maintain harmony by silencing yourself, taking responsibility for other people’s emotions, or carrying more than your share. What looks like competence, generosity, or strength from the outside can feel internally like exhaustion, resentment, anxiety, shame, or disconnection from yourself.

People-pleasing, hyper-competence, perfectionism, self-criticism, and overfunctioning often make it difficult to set boundaries, receive support, or trust that others will show up for you. In relationships, you may pursue reassurance when you sense distance, withdraw when emotions become intense, or remain vigilant after betrayal or broken trust. You may long for emotional intimacy while struggling to stay connected to yourself when someone else is upset.

These patterns often have roots in attachment wounds, trauma, grief, loss, or family systems in which you learned to become the responsible one, the peacemaker, the achiever, the caretaker, or the person who needed very little. These roles may once have helped you preserve approval, connection, or belonging, but they can eventually limit your ability to experience mutuality, emotional freedom, and a secure sense of self.

Pregnancy, postpartum adjustment, parenting, perimenopause, grief, and other major life transitions can bring these deeper patterns closer to the surface. Changes in your body, identity, relationships, or responsibilities may leave you feeling emotionally exposed, unfamiliar to yourself, or unable to keep managing life in the ways you once did.

With 18 years of clinical experience, I help clients move beyond the most visible symptom and understand the deeper emotional, relational, and nervous-system processes beneath it. Together, we slow down the moments when you shut down, seek reassurance, become overwhelmed, abandon your needs, or assume responsibility for everyone around you. This allows us to identify what those reactions are protecting and respond to the underlying fear, grief, anger, shame, or longing with greater clarity and compassion.

This work strengthens trust in your own perceptions, emotions, and needs. You learn to distinguish care from overfunctioning, healthy responsibility from self-sacrifice, and genuine connection from abandoning yourself to preserve a relationship.

As emotional clarity and nervous-system steadiness grow, you can communicate more directly, maintain boundaries without being governed by guilt, and remain connected to yourself through conflict, disappointment, and uncertainty. Shame and self-criticism begin to loosen, and old attachment wounds no longer have to determine how you interpret every silence, disagreement, or change in another person.

The goal is not simply to help you cope harder or more effectively. It is to help you develop a more grounded and integrated sense of self, greater emotional freedom, and relationships built on honesty, trust, reciprocity, and genuine intimacy.

Couples Therapy

You may love one another deeply and still find yourselves caught in a cycle that neither of you knows how to stop. One partner may push for conversation, closeness, or reassurance while the other becomes defensive, shuts down, problem-solves, or tries to keep the peace. The more one reaches, the more the other retreats. Over time, both partners can feel rejected, unappreciated, or emotionally alone.

These cycles often become especially painful because they touch essential human needs: the need to be seen, heard, valued, loved, and emotionally safe with the person who matters most. When those needs are difficult to express directly, they may appear through criticism, anger, protest, silence, accommodation, or withdrawal.

In couples therapy, we will work to understand the cycle rather than deciding which partner is the problem. We will slow down the moments when connection is lost and identify the fears, longings, and protective reactions that shape each person’s response.

You will learn to communicate through needs-based language that reduces blame and makes it safer for your partner to remain emotionally present. Our work may include structured dialogue, experiential exercises, exploration of protective responses, and guided conversations designed to help each of you speak from a more honest and vulnerable place.

For some couples, this work involves rebuilding after betrayal or broken trust. For others, it may focus on parenting, grief, pregnancy, postpartum changes, trauma recovery, or the cumulative disconnection created by the demands of everyday life.

Whatever brings you to therapy, the goal is not simply to reduce conflict. It is to create a relationship in which both partners can feel more fully known, supported, and free to be themselves. As each partner develops a more compassionate relationship with their own emotions and protective responses, the relationship can become a place of shared healing rather than repeated injury.

Perinatal, Postpartum, and Early Parenting Years

Pregnancy, birth, postpartum life, and the transition into parenthood can bring enormous emotional and relational change. Even when a pregnancy or new baby is deeply wanted, this period can stir anxiety, grief, identity shifts, trauma responses, changes in intimacy, and unexpected feelings of loneliness or disconnection.

You may feel overwhelmed by the responsibility of caring for another person, frightened by how much has changed, or disconnected from the version of yourself you knew before. Earlier experiences of caregiving, attachment, loss, or not feeling adequately protected may also resurface as you prepare to care for your own child.

Couples may find that exhaustion, unequal responsibilities, changes in physical and emotional intimacy, or different approaches to parenting begin to expose vulnerabilities that were previously easier to manage.

Therapy offers a place to make sense of these changes without judgment. We can work with the emotional, relational, and nervous-system impact of pregnancy, birth, postpartum adjustment, birth trauma, fertility challenges, and the transition into parenthood while helping you remain connected to yourself and to the people who matter most.

Perimenopause, Identity, and Relationships

Perimenopause is not only a physical or hormonal transition. It can affect mood, sleep, energy, confidence, sexuality, emotional regulation, identity, and the way a person experiences their relationships.

You may feel less able to tolerate demands you once managed, more reactive or emotionally exposed, disconnected from your body, or uncertain about who you are becoming. Long-standing patterns of overfunctioning, caregiving, people-pleasing, or suppressing your own needs may become increasingly difficult to sustain.

For couples, this stage of life can bring changes in intimacy, desire, communication, family roles, parenting, caregiving, and expectations for the future. One partner may be experiencing profound internal changes while the other does not fully understand what is happening. Both may feel rejected, confused, or alone.

I help individuals and couples approach this period not as a personal failure or simply something to endure, but as a significant developmental transition. Therapy can provide space to understand what is changing, care for the nervous system, communicate more honestly, renegotiate roles, and create relationships that are responsive to the people you are becoming.

This work can help you move through perimenopause with greater self-understanding, emotional steadiness, and connection—without asking you to return to a version of yourself that no longer fits.

My Background

My academic background includes a master’s degree in mental health counseling from Capella University. Since completing my graduate education, I have pursued ongoing training in several therapeutic approaches that support depth-oriented, relational, and experiential work, including attachment, family systems, Gestalt, Emotionally Focused Individual and Couple Therapy, Internal Family Systems and parts work, and reality therapy.

My understanding of healing began through lived and experiential learning long before I became a counselor. My own process of growth awakened a desire to understand healing more deeply and eventually to accompany others in their own work.

I began this path more than 27 years ago, and it has continued to evolve through personal reflection, academic study, clinical training, and years of working directly with clients.

My early clinical experience included working as a mental health case manager while completing my master’s degree in mental health counseling at Capella University. This work grounded me in the realities of the human experience and reinforced how deeply we all need safety, dignity, belonging, and meaningful connection.

I later worked with at-risk youth in a residential treatment setting. In that environment, progress was not always immediate or easily measured. I learned that the therapeutic relationship itself can be profoundly meaningful. Patience, consistency, acceptance, and the willingness to remain present often create the foundation from which change eventually becomes possible.

I carried these lessons into private practice, where I have worked with individuals and couples across a range of relational, emotional, and life concerns. Throughout these experiences, one principle has remained central: therapy is most powerful when clients feel genuinely met by another human being while also being supported in moving toward the changes they want to create.