If we end up working together, I prefer to ask, “what have you been through?” rather than “what’s wrong with you?”. In my experience as a psychotherapy client, I have found that feeling non-judgmentally understood is helpful and feeling like there’s something wrong with how I experience the world is not. Problems with anxiety, depression, and trauma do not just spring up from within – there were events and/or relationships that contributed. Your suffering often reflects how you had to cope with such overwhelming or depriving situations during your life.

Once, you feel like someone you trust grasps and empathizes with your experience, a lot of – good – things may start to happen:

• Making use of – instead of doubting – your own reactions
• Recognizing your strengths and believably giving yourself credit for them
• Expressing a wider range of emotions, because it now feels safe to do so
• Experiencing more joy and meaning in your work and relationships
• Relying on people instead of substances to feel better.

I have been fortunate to witness these changes in my clients and experience them firsthand through my own course of psychotherapy. Having the academic knowledge of how therapy is supposed to work along with the experience of what it’s like to be a client allows me to trust in the process of therapy. I hope that if we work together, you will experience a similar sense of hopefulness about what therapy can do for you.

My training and experience in psychotherapy theory and techniques emphasize how important it is for clients to feel safe and understood in the room. I have worked with clients of different cultural and ethnic backgrounds struggling with a wide range of problems – from addiction to pervasive anxiety to crippling depression to PTSD.