What are some therapeutic approaches that you work with?

I am often oriented towards a Humanistic approach, empowering my clients with a focus on personal growth and increasing self-awareness to reach one’s unique potential. We may take this approach to focus on current feelings and experiences instead of past trauma to find meaning and purpose in life.

I am passionate about creating spaces where people can reconnect to unconscious parts of themselves. I also work with clients from a Psychodynamic approach with a focus on changing problematic behaviors, feelings, and thoughts by discovering their unconscious meanings and motivations and the impact of personal history on current thoughts and behaviors.

Quite often we may engage in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), an approach that focuses on how your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors affect each other. We may work towards changing negative thought patterns and building practical coping skills for anxiety, depression, and stress. This perspective along with Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) is especially helpful with clients struggling with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and phobias.

Sandtray therapy is another modality available to clients in in my Goleta office. This is a process in which people are invited to create three-dimensional scenes in a large tray of sand using miniature objects or figures representing all aspects of life as we know it. Sandtray is an expressive, non-verbal, creative approach that can be used with clients of all ages. Sand tray scenes can be reflective and self-expressive, representing many aspects of a person’s life and through this process previously unknown thoughts and feelings may emerge. Sandtray therapy can be a deep and powerful. As themes become visible through the imagery and symbolic approach that is applied, more is brought to the therapy room for exploration and dialogue.

Dreamwork is another therapeutic approach that explores images within dreams to enhance self-awareness and resolve challenging issues. Unlike traditional dream interpretation where the therapist acts as the expert on dream symbols, my work with clients empowers them to discover personal meaning in their dreams through guided exploration. The fundamental element of our work together lies in the collaborative approach to dream exploration. Rather than imposing predetermined symbolic meanings, we work together in discovering your own dream significance, emphasizing personal associations and lived experience. Key principles include a client-centered, collaborative focus with cultural sensitivity that integrates dreamwork with individual therapeutic goals.