About me
Life is going to happen; we are going to experience joy and dread, trauma and grief, connection and heartbreak. It can be scary not knowing what’s to come.
We all have learned ways of handling the harder parts of life; maybe you throw yourself into work, use substances, numb out while scrolling, or maybe you act out or shut down. In an effort to “get through" many of us find ourselves disconnected because life can be (really) painful.
Prior to becoming a therapist, I worked in New York City as a chef. It was intense and all-consuming work and I found myself disconnected from my friends and family and from many of the things that made me happy. I felt anxious, isolated, and exhausted. Without my network and a secure sense of self, I felt a loss of agency and direction.
I believe in this work because it’s what helped me. My hope for our time together is to remind you that you have agency and, with curiosity, to help you find ways of navigating life instead of simply “getting through.”
We cannot rid life of pain, but we can learn to understand that pain in ways that don’t disconnect us but brings us in greater contact with what it means to be alive, even if that means feeling the good with the bad.
I hope to help you learn to experience your feelings and to find meaning in doing so.
Through observation and exploration of your internal world—your thoughts, feelings, dreams, and fantasies—we will begin to understand how you feel, how you approach those feelings, and call attention to what it’s like to immerse yourself in the present. With a deep curiosity about your early life, we will explore what influences your ways of thinking and being and begin to find new meaning and new experience.
You cannot numb out the painful parts of life without also taking from the good. When I decided to leave my job as a chef, I asked myself: do you want to continue to live in a state of disconnection? Or do you want to learn to feel without being afraid of what that really means? I chose the latter. By inviting in all the feels, my hope is that you find yourself in greater contact with the experience of being human and with the ability to connect more deeply, love more intensely, create more actively, and experience joy more presently.
Credentials and Schooling:
I attended Pepperdine University where I earned my Master’s in Clinical Psychology with an Emphasis on Marriage and Family Therapy.
During my training, I gained experience at Southern California Hospital, Culver City Brotman where I worked in their Intensive Outpatient Group Program. In addition to my time at the hospital, I gained experience at St. Genevieve High School where worked I with teens struggling with anxiety, depression, and disordered eating.
I completed my post-degree training from The Wright Institute Los Angeles (WILA), where I participated in a 2.5 year psychoanalytic psychotherapy training and hold a certificate in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy.
My additional trainings include certification in Emotion-Focused Couples Therapy (EFT) Level 1 and I am currently enrolled in the Altered States Program at the Los Angeles Institute and Society for Psychoanalytic Studies (LAISPS).
Please feel free to ask me questions about my past and current training.