I am a licensed therapist located in Asheville, NC. I specialize in helping people make sense of and work through trauma, complex trauma, anxiety/depression, relationship difficulties, and extreme internal states. I work with people from a wide range of backgrounds and life experiences, including those who have been marginalized based on gender, race, and sexuality.
My Approach
I approach this work using a supportive psychoanalytic approach that draws on many different traditions. I consider your own inherent wisdom as fundamental when I sit with you, and I consider the therapeutic relationship itself to be an important source of change.
I generally work from the following assumptions:
We naturally orient ourselves towards healing in more ways than we realize.
Our emotions tell us about what is important in our lives and the things we need.
We get caught in harmful cycles not because we are broken but because we are trying to master things essential to us.
Insight is helpful but sometimes not enough; reparative relationships are essential.
The question is not “what is wrong with me?” It is “what has happened to me?”
Emotional crises give us a window into our yearnings.
I believe in “both/and” thinking. When we hold two opposing truths at the same time, we often find new ways forward.
Contact me if you’d like to do a free 15-minute phone consultation to see if we may be a good fit for one another.
I also enjoy working with those who hear voices or have been diagnosed with a psychotic disorder. I focus on helping you find meaning and recover your life from these paralyzing experiences and from the stigma and misunderstandings that are common about these diagnoses. My values are aligned with the Hearing Voices Network and I am a member of ISPS-US.
I enjoy helping people reckon more deeply with the pervasive and complex impacts of racism, sexism, transphobia, and ableism— and I see this as an essential aspect of any intensive therapeutic process. I believe that therapy can be part of breaking these oppressive cycles, moving us all towards collective liberation.
A Bit About Me
I am a graduate of Smith College School for Social Work. I have worked in community mental health, with adults living with severe and persistent mental illness and with youth in residential settings. I completed a clinical placement at UNC Chapel Hill Counseling and Psychological Services, providing individual and group psychotherapy to undergraduate and graduate students. I am licensed by the state of North Carolina as a mental health practitioner (License # C015379). I am also licensed in Florida, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Vermont. I am a candidate in the National Training Program in Contemporary Psychoanalysis, under the umbrella of the National Institute for the Psychotherapies in New York City.
Click here to contact me about your situation and how I may be able to help.
“An individual having unusual difficulties in coping with his environment struggles and kicks up the dust, as it were. I have used the figure of a fish caught on a hook: his gyrations must look peculiar to other fish that don’t understand the circumstances; but his splashes are not his affliction, they are his effort to get rid of his affliction and as every fisherman knows these efforts may succeed.” - Karl Menninger
Reach Out
Click on the contact button below or email me. I will reach back out to you soon and we can schedule a phone consultation.