Services
I provide psychotherapy and consultation to individuals, couples and families.
Broadly speaking, my current practice focuses on assisting those who are looking for more dependable connections and fulfilling relationships, based on trust. This includes one's relationship to oneself. When our relationships, both internal and with others, feel more or less secure, we meet life's ups and downs with relative flexibility and confidence.
Some people seek help in coping with the effects of early trauma on current relationships. Some want to regain lost feelings of intimacy. Some have endured seemingly minor, less-than-ideal circumstances during childhood, that nevertheless, resulted in a kind of limitation in their range of emotional choices or a restriction in their freedom of expression. All seek security, a sense of peace, ease in themselves, and confidence in those who care for them.
I foster a mindful approach to the healing relationship while bringing warmth, a measured pace, and a deep respect for the strengths, inherent health, and intelligence of each individual.
I welcome those who are just beginning their families or who are in the post-partum adjustment period, because of my love of newborns and the critical importance of those earliest moments in creating a foundation of well-being.
I offer pre-and post-adoption counseling for anyone touched by adoption: prospective and expectant parents, birthparents, adopted children and adults, adoptive parents; I am available for consultation to professionals.
Before the Covid pandemic office hours were held in-person in Hamilton, MA on the North Shore of Boston.
I am currently seeing clients only via Teletherapy on the Zoom platform or by phone.
Theoretical orientation and treatment approach
Underlying all my clinical work are three key concepts:
Attachment theory describes the healthy foundational relationship between parent and child created in the first three years of life that gives a person a sense of basic trust in self and others, and a sense of safety in the world. Secure attachment is the basis for both child and adult development across all domains: physical, social, intellectual, emotional and spiritual. The creation of secure attachment relationships and the repair of attachment wounds or challenges in infants, children, adults, and couples’ relationships is a primary focus of my clinical work.
Family systems theory provides a framework for recognizing that none of us stands alone. None of us can be fully known in isolation from our primary relationships. Each of us is born into specific family relationships that influence our development and that color our ways of being, even after we have long ago left our families of origin. These multiple relationships give a broader context of strengths and weaknesses, and patterns of behavior than we could see if we looked only at the nature of the individual and his or her internal psychology. Even when working with individuals I am informed by family systems theory.
I am committed to learning and incorporating the latest, cutting edge research on healing trauma in my work. Recent advances in affective neuroscience, attachment theory, prenatal and perinatal psychology, and somatic psychology inform my practice and treatment methods. I use EMDR, a proven modality for treatment of trauma, and I integrate Somatic Experiencing, including healing touch, as appropriate in my work.