Experience as a Psychotherapist and Marriage and Family Counselor

Overview

I received my Masters of Arts in Integral Counseling Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in San Francisco in 1997 and my Bachelor of Arts in Fine Arts from San Francisco State University in 1985.

I have been a practicing psychotherapist since 1995 and in private practice since 2004. For ten years, I was affiliated with the TALKLine Family Support Center/San Francisco Child Abuse Prevention Center in San Francisco, both as a therapist and as a Clinical Supervisor. In addition to my work as a clinician, I also supervise therapists-in-training, most recently through the auspices of the California Institute for Integral Studies and the Blue Oak Counseling Center. I participate in professional training on a continuing basis to continue to refine and broaden my skills and knowledge as a therapist and to help ensure that I am apprised of the latest developments in psychological thought.

Prior to becoming a psychotherapist, I worked for twenty-five years with a variety of social service organizations in San Francisco, including with agencies with specialties in assisting women and persons with disabilities and chronic physical and mental illness. I also worked for more than a decade at McAuley Neuropsychiatric Institute, as a Health Educator/Client Advocate with the San Francisco Department of Mental Health for four years, and in the management of a three-year grant sponsored by the California State Department of Mental Health that provided affordable housing and related services to persons with histories of chronic homelessness.

Additional Information

I work eclectically, and draw from a variety of therapeutic approaches and modalities to best meet the needs of each of my clients. I tend to resonate most closely with psychodynamic, developmental, humanistic, existential, transpersonal and relational orientations to psychotherapy, and also employ processes that focus more on somatic experience and the role of cognition and thought on psychological well-being and functioning.

I am adept at both crisis-oriented and solution-focused strategies that focus on the more practical needs of persons with crises or experiencing conflicts or psychological and social stresses in their personal or professional lives, however, I am most “at home” in the more intensive process of depth psychotherapy.

In addition to my experience responding to the needs of persons with histories of trauma, I have gained invaluable training as a family therapist while at the TALKLine, especially with parents and families with histories of child abuse, with sons or daughters with special needs or who are raising children without the benefit of a partner or spouse. I also have considerable experience with blended families, and responding to situations in which there has been divorce and separation, domestic abuse, chronic or severe illness, disability, difficulties related to education, employment and care-giving and aging, and questions and conflicts regarding personal identity.

I have a special interest in assisting children and adults who have lost their parents in early life, and families who have experienced or are contending with the physical or mental illness of a one of their members. I have also helped many couples, some uncertain of the viability of their futures together, to begin to understand one another and their vulnerabilities as a couple, cultivate new and more compassionate ways of communicating, mediate their conflicts and develop more closeness and open-heartedness, and enjoy this process immensely.

In addition to excellent training and mentorship, involving a variety of exemplary clinicians, I have been actively engaged in my own personal growth for more than thirty years, and bring a keen and passionate interest in the processes of human learning and transformation to my personal and professional development.

While I believe that our skill and craft as clinicians must be cultivated through study and practice and a thorough and ongoing review of our own lives, that the therapeutic endeavor is fundamentally, at its heart, a human one, created mutually by client and therapist in tandem.

Through my own life experiences, I have gained both a profound regard for persons who have experienced tragedy, loss or hardship and a sensitive understanding of the many challenges they may encounter in their lives. One of my strengths as a therapist is an ability to convey this respect and understanding and create an atmosphere in which even persons uncertain about or mistrustful of therapy can begin to safely explore their psychological lives. I have found that accompanying my clients in this process, and creating a reparative experience of relatedness, often provides them with a broader sense of possibility for their lives, which can be in itself tremendously healing. When approached with integrity, compassion, curiosity and care, its reparative potential can be profound and life-altering.