What type of client excites you?
My professional focus is trauma-informed care and LGBTQIA+ issues. I chose those because I’m trans and I saw a deep need for trauma-informed affirmative care in my community. I know all too well what our society does to us, how it traumatizes us. LGBTQIA+ people face unique challenges as individuals, when forming and maintaining romantic relationships, and as families. It’s important for queer people to encounter therapists that understand those challenges and the effects of trauma. I’m excited to show up for my community and help individuals, couples, and families within it process trauma, navigate challenges, and, most importantly, help them THRIVE despite the state of the world.
What can clients expect when they first come to therapy? How would you describe a typical session with you?
Sessions with me are conversational and approached with radical empathy and compassion with the intent of creating an active partnership. I believe the way we speak about our experiences holds the key to understanding them in new ways. Through this conversational partnership, we work together to reveal strengths and new perspectives that lead to positive change.
Early sessions are spent getting to know each other. I’ll ask a lot of questions. The general ones like what brought them to therapy, but also about their loved ones, work, and hobbies. I encourage the client to ask me questions as well. It’s important they feel comfortable with me and trust that I can walk with them while they share and explore the most vulnerable parts of themselves.
In further sessions, the client and I collaborate to set realistic goals and make plans to meet them. This may include using relevant tools and resources from many approaches to therapy. It’s important we find practical solutions that fit within their existing lives. Therapy is a place of exploration and small change that builds over time to long-term peace and healing.
What is your personal style as a therapist?
As a therapist, my first job is to listen with fierce compassion and empathy. I will never know my clients, their experiences, or the workings of their lives better than they do. I bring knowledge and expertise of the process of therapy. I believe my clients are full of innate strengths. I provide a safe space for them to share their stories, where we work together to leverage existing strengths to find solutions and new perspectives that create healing and lasting change.
How do you believe therapy can be beneficial?
Therapy creates a safe space to be vulnerable and seen. It can teach healthy coping and communication skills, but most importantly, it provides an opportunity to explore yourself. It’s a place of incremental change that adds up to a new way of living and being. It heals the wounds within and teaches how to navigate the world in a way that promotes maintaining that hard-won inner peace.
What do you think are the most important considerations when looking for a therapist?
Finding a therapist you trust and can have open communication with. Research shows that the strength of the relationship between the client and therapist is the number one predictor of a positive outcome from therapy. Having a therapist that “feels right” can be the difference between progress and feeling stuck or like therapy doesn’t work for you.
What do you hope your clients walk away with?
I hope my clients walk away empowered with healthy coping mechanisms and communication skills, but most importantly, with a better sense of who they are and how they want to show up in the world. Therapy can never heal everything or remove all the struggles life throws at us, but it can give us the knowledge, confidence, and belief that we can make it through the tough stuff and empower us to do so much more than survive.