This is your journey, you get to decide what is a part of it.

Attachment-based therapy views the individual in relation to others. Relationships can inspire our deepest sense of connection, joy and belonging--both to ourselves and to others. They can also provoke our deepest insecurities, pains, and disconnection. These attachment wounds can be healed through re-connection. An Ecological Attachment model looks beyond the parent/child and partner dyads to envision how our relationship to self, caregiver(s), partner(s), culture & community, environment, and spirit nurture us and heal our wounds. Thank you to Kai Cheng Thom for your teachings on this.

Liberation-Focused Healing challenges the mainstream mental health industrial complex that is centered in white supremacist, medicalized, individualistic, heteronormative, ableist, and capitalistic ways of being and knowing. Instead, a Liberation-Focused healing approach works to de-colonize therapy as we know it and centers cultural, familial, and ancestral values, wisdom, and strengths. Thank you to Dr. Shawna Murray-Browne, LCSW-C for your teachings on this.

An integrative approach believes that our bodies have a natural capacity and innate ability to heal. I utilize Dr. Leslie Korn’s Brainbow Blueprint for clients that are interested in assessing how one’s physical & mental health are intertwined and connected. This takes our relationship to rest & sleep, nutrition (culinary medicine), movement, medicine (pharmaceuticals, herbs, supplements, psychedelics) , and our soma/body into the therapy room.

An embodied approach uplifts the mind-body connection to invite healing. It acknowledges the reality that our “issues are in our tissues” and our body holds the answers. I utilize somatic and psychosensory therapy techniques (including EMDR & Havening) to support feeling into emotions and the “felt sense” within the body to embody individual & collective healing.

I utilize a Radical Mental Health approach that questions the bio-medical model labels of “professional” and “patient/client”. As a therapist, I address the power dynamic within the therapist-client relationship and strive to use a truly collaborative approach that puts the “client/healee” as the expert of their own lived experience. I do not aim to present myself as a “blank slate” which is common in mental health. I am a human with particular lived experiences and positionality. Just like you, I also have my own struggles, mental health “issues”, and healing journey. We are in this together.

I firmly believe that our understanding of mental health must come with an understanding of the social and political forces that are working around us. Access to healthcare, housing, financial stability, nutritious foods, education, and community resources are just as important as this thing we call “therapy”. Therapy is just one tool of healing. I encourage each “healee” to embrace all healing tools that feel right for them whether the healing is done in the forest, the club, or the kitchen.