My Approach to Therapy
Healing the whole You.
You are more than a diagnosis, a behavior, or a life story. You're a whole person, and the way I work reflects that.
My approach is holistic, relational, direct, and warm. We'll look at how your mind, body, emotions, relationships, history, and environment weave together to shape what you're experiencing now.
Anxiety often connects to chronic stress living in your body. Depression can be tangled up with disconnection from your values or your community. Trauma lives in the nervous system as much as in memory.
You don't have to compartmentalize yourself here.
What I believe about change
We become able to change when we can sit with our discomfort long enough to understand what it's trying to teach us.
Most of us have spent years getting very good at moving away from difficult feelings. Therapy offers a place to turn toward them instead, with enough support that doing so doesn't overwhelm you.
Understanding on its own only gets you so far. Insight needs to be paired with practical skills and tools you can actually use on a Tuesday afternoon.
The balance of emotional work and practical work is what makes therapy hold.
So we'll usually carry two things at once: an overarching theme for our work together, and shorter-term goals that let you see real progress in your life while the deeper work unfolds.
Fit matters more than method.
No modality is effective without trust.
I could bring the best training in the world into the room and it wouldn't do much without a relationship that feels genuine to you.
Goodness of fit is the foundation everything else rests on. That's why I offer a free consultation before we start, so you can find out how I actually am before committing to anything.
How I work
Because I work through a trauma-informed lens, my style is relational. In practice that looks like this:
I use humor and normal language.
Therapy doesn't need to sound like a textbook. If I use a clinical term, I'll explain what I mean by it.
I'm direct.
I'll tell you what I'm noticing. If something seems important, I'll say so rather than waiting for you to arrive there on your own.
I don't rush to intervention.
There's a style of therapy that treats every difficulty as something broken to be fixed quickly. I'd rather understand what's happening first, and often what looks like a problem turns out to be a strategy that made sense at some point.
I'll meet you where you are.
Some people come in needing to seriously slow down. Others have been sitting with something for years and need to take action. Part of my job is reading which one you need, and noticing when that changes.
I'll ask you to be curious rather than judgmental.
Moving from "what's wrong with me" to "what's happening here" tends to open everything else.
I'll encourage you to step outside your comfort zone. Real change usually lives just past the edge of what feels manageable. We'll go there at a pace you set, and we will go there.
Modalities
Internal Family Systems
IFS helps us understand the different parts of ourselves: the inner critic, the caretaker, the protector, the playful child. We all have many parts, and while they're usually trying to help, they can get stuck in painful roles.
I've completed Level 1 training with the IFS Institute. IFS offers a way to listen to these parts so they feel seen and understood, and eventually relieved of what they've been carrying. Underneath them is a calm, curious center called the Self, which can lead the whole system with more wisdom than any single part can manage alone.
Once a part feels genuinely understood, it tends to relax on its own.
Mindfulness
Mindfulness is the practice of paying attention on purpose, with kindness. In session it helps us slow down and notice what's actually happening in your thoughts, your body, and your emotions before reacting to any of it.
We might work with breath, body awareness, grounding, or reflection. The aim is to build your capacity to stay present with yourself even when it's uncomfortable, and to find the space between what happens and how you respond.
Sensorimotor Psychotherapy
Past experiences, especially trauma, live in the body as much as in the mind. Sometimes you feel stuck in patterns of tension, numbness, or reactivity that talking alone doesn't shift.
I've completed Level 1 and Level 2 training with the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute. This work means tuning into physical cues, impulses, and sensations that point toward where healing is needed. Working with body and mind together helps reduce symptoms like hypervigilance and restores a sense of safety and ease. Over time most people feel more grounded and more connected, both to themselves and to the world around them.
Creativity
You don't need to think of yourself as artistic to benefit from this. Creativity here means finding new ways of seeing and expressing your experience.
I often invite clients to use journaling, collage, or imagery alongside talk therapy. These can bypass overthinking, surface parts of yourself that words don't reach, and make room for insight that arrives sideways.
If you’re curious about working together, I’d love to hear from you.
Available in person in Vancouver, WA and online throughout Washington and Oregon.