Background

     I am coming into my 10th year of professional practice. My training first began in college as Peer Counselor and Training Director at Washington University's Peer Counseling Center, which I followed by working in Kettering Behavioral Hospital's Adolescent Acute Unit and at Dayton's Suicide Prevention Center. I sought graduate training at Baylor University, where I treated patients in the Limestone County Adult Probation Program, Baylor University's Counseling Center, the Limestone County MHMR Community Mental Health Agency, and ultimately the Veterans Affairs Hudson Valley Healthcare System.  I relocated to DC, and began practice at the Capital Institute for Cognitive Therapy, the center for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in DC.  At CICT, I learned the Empirically Supported Treatments for Anxiety and Mood Disorders and trained other clinicians in the application of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.  During my time there, I pursued additional training at the Washington School of Psychiatry, completing their two year Clinical Program in Psychodynamic Psychotherapy. I remained at CICT for 7 years, serving as a Staff Psychologist, Supervising Psychologist, and Externship Director, and in 2013, I left to begin my own practice.  

 

 

Treatment Philosophy

     To various degrees we are aware of ourselves and to various degrees we know how to work with ourselves, our feelings, and our life circumstances. Most likely, however, you are considering therapy because something in your life is stretching you beyond what you know how to respond to adaptively.  This suggests that we live within a range, a range of what we typically think, feel, and do; and all of which thus establishes who we are and the world we live in. We might begin to wonder though, where exactly is it that I live, and why? You may know this parable: A fish swims by two other fish and says, "Morning boys! How's the water?" The two smile politely, swim on, and one puzzlingly looks to the other and asks, "What's water?" This is everyone's story. We all have a 'water,' but often we easily forget this, and we also are often unaware of what our water is made of, how it works, and how it shapes our lives. 

 

     Therapy is an opportunity to know more; it is an opportunity to develop an intelligence about your mind; and it is an opportunity to expand your personal range.  My basic philosophy is that life opens up when these happen.   I hope, in my work with you, to help you meet your own goals for treatment.  I too hope that you come to learn how to work with your mind more; and that somewhere in the experience of therapy you'll start to hold your mind a little more softly, to take your thoughts with grains of salt and curiosity, and to ask questions like: What is this about? What am I responding to? What more could there be? My last hope is that you may at moments see how lovely your mind is, the intelligence, creativity, and natural possiblity that it embodies, and something in which you may take true awe, joy, and delight.