Griz, my calm and friendly black lab, is often part of the therapeutic process. His gentle presence offers comfort, emotional grounding, and a sense of connection that can be especially powerful during difficult conversations. Whether sitting beside you or simply being in the room, Griz helps create a welcoming space where healing can unfold naturally. I believe deeply in the human–animal bond and the unique way animals support emotional well-being.

EMDR is at the heart of my trauma work. Rather than requiring you to talk through every painful detail, EMDR works with your brain's natural ability to heal by helping it process and file away memories that still feel raw or present. I use this approach with clients navigating attachment trauma, birth trauma, and acute crisis, and many find it moves faster and goes deeper than talk therapy alone.

CBT is about more than tracking thoughts and feelings. When trauma is part of the picture, I use it to help clients dig into the beliefs that have been shaping their lives, often for a very long time. Things like feeling responsible for everything that goes wrong, or never quite believing you are enough. We look at where those beliefs came from and work on loosening their grip.

I hold a certificate in Gender and Women's Studies from UW-Madison and it genuinely shapes how I see everything. I do not look at your struggles as purely individual problems. I look at the systems, expectations, and invisible loads that are part of your experience too. This means your voice is centered, your autonomy is respected, and nothing about who you are is treated as something to fix.

This is the foundation underneath everything else I do. I believe you are the expert on your own life, and my job is to follow your lead while offering honest reflection along the way. One tool I come back to often is what I call the "friend filter,” which helps clients extend to themselves the same compassion they would never hesitate to give someone they love.

Schemas are the deeply held internal rules we develop early in life to survive our circumstances. Things like needing to predict every possible bad outcome, or believing your worth depends on what you produce. I help clients get curious about where those rules came from and what it might look like to live without them. This work often bridges the gap between knowing something logically and actually feeling it.

What's happening in your body matters as much as what's happening in your mind. I help clients learn to recognize their own physical warning signs before things escalate, whether that's a tightening in the chest, a sudden shutdown, or that feeling right before you hit your limit. From there we build practical, personalized tools for regulation that you can actually use in real life.

Sometimes insight is not the missing piece. When clients are burned out, overwhelmed, or stuck in analysis paralysis, we skip the deep dive and build a plan. This looks different for everyone but might include a structured routine, a concrete short-term goal, or just figuring out what the very next step is. Small and doable beats perfect every time.

DBT gives clients concrete tools for moments when emotions feel too big to manage. I draw from the distress tolerance and interpersonal effectiveness modules to help clients get through hard moments without making things worse, navigate self-harm urges in safer ways, and build the communication skills needed to hold boundaries and ask for what they need.