I am on the faculty of the Sex Therapy Program at the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy (ICP) where I supervise and teach sex therapists. I am certified in sex and couples therapy, and have a private practice in NYC. I work together with the people I see to create a tailored approach to treatment. I utilize various therapeutic tools to help find and process trauma, to keep that thread going while we explore behavioral or thought experiments, and to keep that work alive while tapping into a more authentic, present version of the self that guides people to feel more satisfied, attuned, and connected to their needs, values, and desires. I help people to identify and articulate what’s missing, to create tools for growth and understanding, and to demystify and make accessible the feeling of true connectedness and presence.
I work with individuals and couples from diverse backgrounds in terms of identity, class, traditional and non-traditional lifestyles. I have extensive experience in helping people in the LGBTQ+ community as well as the BIPOC, immigrant, and religiously diverse communities. As a white, straight, cisgender woman, I bring a personal interrogation of my various identities to ensure that my work is helpful to anyone I am working with. I aim to manage my privilege and the blindness it causes in my daily life, to maintain awareness of the ways that I may do harm, and to repair any ruptures made by my own missteps. I have been a useful ally to people with different identities than my own, and consider this to be a vital aspect of my success as a clinician, and one that I am most proud of.
I help people to heal trauma, to manage and treat compulsions or out of control behaviors, to understand the needs behind limiting thought and behavior patterns and to address those needs in alignment with their values. Grief, a ubiquitous aspect of the human experience, is something I am often helping people to connect with, as even when we seek help, we are saying goodbye to that version of ourselves from the moment before seeking. Grief is present throughout any change process, and we often have heaps of it sitting about unprocessed within ourselves. I help people to learn to trust these emotions, to move through them, and to avoid the pitfalls of getting stuck.
Our bodies hold so much of our experiences, and often need to play some role in talk therapy. Typically this is a simple act of connecting our attention to our physical sensations in some way. I bring this emphasis to my work with most clients, though it varies significantly in prominence from one case to the next. For some of us, we need to process our emotions in a way that involves the nonverbal elements of emotion, the corresponding physical sensations. If this is indicated, I am adept at guiding people through that process.
I help people improve emotional regulation, trust, sexual connection, and sexual functioning. As a certified sex therapist, I help people find their path to transformation, to gain access to a sense of fulfillment of the whole self, including the erotic. I work with concerns with sexual functioning, including unpredictable erection patterns, pre-orgasmic individuals, concerns about libido or desire, the intersection of trauma and sexuality, asexuality and asymmetric relationship orientations, and the quest for optimal pleasure.
I provide psychotherapy incorporating safety and non-judgmental attunement, considering the individual through attachment, relational and developmental theories. I utilize evidence-based methods while collaborating with clients to create a tailored and evolving treatment. My practice facilitates the journey towards a deeper level of self-awareness, a sense of purpose, and satisfaction in life. My background is rooted in mindfulness work, which I incorporate into my practice of psychotherapy in various ways. Memories, thoughts, and emotions have corresponding areas of sensation in the body, and simple mindfulness tools may be implemented to help people bridge habitual disconnect between body, mind and emotion.