I’m a licensed clinical psychologist based in northern Virginia, with over 12 years of experience providing therapy. I currently have a full-time practice where I see individuals and couples, both in person and online, and I’m a Fellow at the Washington Baltimore Center for Psychoanalysis. Several times a year, I provide seminars to training therapists at Mount Sinai Health System in New York City and the Washington DC Veterans Affairs Medical Center, both places where I’ve previously trained and led research. I’ve also completed specialized training in couples therapy at The Gottman Institute.

Those who work with me come from all walks of life, with a huge range of backgrounds and upbringings. Some people come with specific goals they’d like to achieve or symptoms they’d like to improve; others arrive at my doorstep wanting to process hardships, life transitions, or with a general sense that something has been off or of feeling stuck; many seek me out because their relationships aren’t what they want them to be. Those who seem to click with me tend to have a similar interest in understanding themselves more deeply so they can feel more self-confident and comfortable in their own skin.

At its heart, therapy is relational — it’s a relationship, itself, and it’s also about relationships from the past and from the present; but, mostly, therapy is about the relationship we have with ourselves. How we treat ourselves and others in our world is shaped largely by the stories our minds have woven about who we are and what we imagine others think of us. The way I generally work with people flows from that idea.

My approach and the way I think about your problems, strengths, and needs are unique to you; but, generally speaking, I’ll help you clarify the narratives that guide your life — ones, maybe, you’ve known for a long time and others that have been living at the edges of your awareness. I’ll work to help you deepen your understanding of how these thoughts serve you but also how they might be holding you back. We might try to influence how you construct and consolidate storylines about yourself and other people, and how you experience your own feelings. We’ll work to create a little more space — or less — between when thoughts come to mind and how you respond to them — to create the possibility of a different relationship in that moment with yourself and people around you. As these moments accumulate over time, little shifts begin to happen, and you might begin to inhabit new narratives and experience a fuller, more authentic way of being.