Mental Health Counseling

In my mental health counseling practice, I work primarily with adolescents and adults aged 14 through 80+ struggling with a variety of mental health issues including depression, anxiety, emotional regulation problems, grief, relationship problems and trauma-related disorders. Using a warm, collaborative, person-centered approach, I offer a calm, empathetic and unbiased presence and space for the challenges that my clients face in their daily lives. As a client, your sense of trust and safety in our therapeutic relationship are of the utmost importance to me, and so I strongly encourage and welcome any feedback you may have about our work together and the direction of your treatment. You are always in the driver’s seat while I help to observe and guide.

Through the therapeutic dialogue in our sessions, we work together to access the emotions, inner strength and wisdom that can serve to guide you towards your personal goals and needed steps on life’s journey. In our work, I may also provide psychoeducation about the workings of the human mind and psychological symptom presentation, as well as skills training (including interpersonal skills, mindfulness, sensory grounding, positive visualization and other emotional regulation skills).

In my counseling practice, I have also found it helpful to work from a “parts” perspective in which we explore and normalize the human experience of holding contradictory feelings or beliefs at different times (or sometimes simultaneously!).  For example, you may have a certain personal goal, such as practicing self-compassion or building a better relationship with yourself, but at the same time struggle with self-sabotaging or self-destructive behaviors, or a powerful “inner critic.” By identifying and understanding the different, sometimes contradictory internal and external forces that drive our behavior, we can then gain the opportunity to work with those forces in more harmonious, effective ways.

Additionally, as someone who has lived and worked in the Philadelphia area as a mental health counselor for over ten years, and across all levels of mental health care (from inpatient or residential treatment to partial hospitalization to intensive outpatient settings), I can offer a wide knowledge base of local resources should you need extra support beyond individual outpatient counseling.