Services Offered
Counseling for Parents and Caregivers
My clients are hard-working caregivers, striving to feel good enough at their many jobs and roles. The demands of life and parenting, especially multiple children or children with BIG feelings, can be overwhelming and enormous. We cannot provide attunement, presence, and soothing if we are consistently triggered and struggling with reactivity. Here we will center you and your needs. There is no perfect parent, and, science tells us good enough is pretty damn good! Let's go for it. We will focus on what's coming up for you, your triggers, your emotional needs and identify effective tools and interpersonal strategies to incorporate at home.
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I also offer counseling to caregivers who are processing their child's recent diagnosis of ADHD or ASD. Together we can explore what this means (and doesn't mean) for your child and the family system.
Counseling for Kids and Adolecents
Often meeting with caregivers alone is enough to shift and the challenging dynamics and issues families are facing. Sometimes, however, it is helpful to meet with kids as well. Behavior always has a purpose, it is communicating something, or it is an attempt to meet a need... Always! even the most challenging and inconvenient behaviors have a purpose. Our children sometimes need our help identifying their feelings, and translating their feelings, behaviors, and needs into words. I provide play therapy, sand tray, and expressive arts therapies to support children in exploring the needs, feelings, and themes underneath the behaviors. This service is most appropriate for youth who are able and available to meet for sessions with parents and individually.
*If your child is grieving the loss of a loved one play therapy and sand tray can be particularly helpful in gently processing these feelings.
Clinical Consultation for Schools and Administrators
I offer clinical consultation rooted in the science of Poly Vagal Theory and Interpersonal Neurobiology to teachers and administrators who want and need to respond to the big feelings and challenging behaviors their students are bringing to and or having at school.
My Approach
As a committed student and practitioner of Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB) and Poly Vagal Theory, I have learned that our perspective on behaviors changes the behaviors themselves. This means, learning about what's going on inside a person when they are having a overwhelming feeling and big behavior, neurologically and physiologically, actually impacts how we, the caregiver, experience their feelings and behaviors. This gives new meaning to the concept that our kids are 'having a hard time, not giving us a hard time'. In our work, we will learn a bit about our nervous systems and or complex brains (some say we have three) and we will get curious about the reference points for the strong emotions and behaviors that erupt from us and rock us. Above all, I hope to co-create a therapeutic relationship that allows you to feel known, understood, and empowered to make the changes you want to make in your life.
