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Counseling and Psychotherapy
Therapy is creating a safe space to strengthen your relationship with yourself so that you can persist, work through and overcome any of life's challenges. Though I enjoy working across the spectrum of mental health and wellness, I offer a specialization in helping children and adults to cope with and thrive through Anxiety and Trauma.
Call today to schedule an appointment!
Areas of Focus
Anxiety, Anger, Trauma or PTSD, Childhood Abuse or Neglect, Depression, Life Transitions, Relationships, LGBTQI, Parenting, Sleep, Stress Management, Recovery from Substance Abuse
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Expertise
Trauma, Co-Occurring Disorders, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Narrative Therapy, Psychodynamic Psychotherapy, Relational Psychotherapy
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Your Investment
What is Psychoanalysis?
Psychoanalysis is an immersive relational experience in which frequency of sessions invites the deepest parts of ourselves to come to life so that you can put your past in the past, freeing up your fullest, most vital self.
FAQs:
Who seeks out psychoanalysis? People who are looking for lasting change. Those who have tried other types of therapy and may have even found some relief, but who want more. People who are stuck in painful, repeating patterns. People who have been labeled as "treatment resistant". People who suffer from the internal impact of traumatic experience and want to gift themselves with an opportunity to feel safe, secure and connected from the inside-out. People who have become parents and want to understand and be free of painful intergenerational patterns for themselves and their children/future generations. Therapists who wish to have a greater capacity to hold emotional pain for themselves and with the people who entrust them with their care. Academics and creatives who are interested in connecting more deeply with their creativity. Psychoanalysis is no longer an ivory tower - it is for anyone who wants it.
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Can psychoanalysis help with trauma? Yes. Although psychoanalysis has had a dark history with trauma work, contemporary analytic thinkers have attempted to re-integrate historic and foundational figures like Ferenczi, who have long been on the cutting edge of trauma work. I am a committed member of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation, and to the space in-between psychoanalysis and traumatology. Psychoanalysis isn't about techniques or scripts, like many other modalities DBR, EMDR, IFS, etc.. Instead, psychoanalysis is about you - you in relationships, your development and growth as a person, and connecting with your self and understanding the impacts of trauma experience and the ways in which trauma may have thwarted parts of your self and relational development. Above all, it is a reclamation of safety - from body to mind, mind to body, inside out to outside in. I may also incorporate some "techniques", (I use hypnosis and Deep Brain Reorienting) if that would be in your best interest.
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Do I have to lie on a couch? No. Freud said he asked his patients to lie on a couch because he couldn't stand to look at them. I enjoy relating to others. It's also important to be with one another, face to face.​
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Will you tell me my problems are about sexual wishes about my parents? Probably not. Contemporary psychoanalysis is not about understanding people through a Victorian-era lens, or fitting you into any rigid framework - it is about understanding you from you - with the possibility of incorporating a kaleidoscope of ways of thinking about the human experience.
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Where did you study? The Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity - IPSS (2020-2025) and the Psychoanalytic Institute of Philadelphia (2010-2012).
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Do you teach psychoanalysis? Yes. I have taught for the Psychoanalytic Institute of Tehran, the National Institute for the Psychotherapies and currently teach for the Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity and am part of the Fellowship Program at the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia.​
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Is psychoanalysis expensive? Psychoanalysis is an investment in yourself. I am able to negotiate fee if necessary, but my primary way of "giving back" is by teaching and supervising new therapists. If you need a significantly reduced fee, please contact your local psychoanalytic institute to see if you might work well with a psychoanalytic candidate. I'm happy to assist.
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Does psychoanalysis last forever? No - nothing lasts forever. It will be longer term, and most people work with me for at least two years, some longer, and many choose to stay in therapy with reduced frequency of sessions.
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​Will you make me dependent on you? No. I won't "make" you anything - you have agency in your work with me. There may be periods when you might *feel* dependent, and that's ok. If it doesn't *feel* okay, that might be something to work through. Just as we all need to experience attachment and individuation in our earliest years, that too may come to life in the arc of our experience together.
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Any other questions or fears?
Reach out and give me a call, we can set up a time for a consultation.
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After​​​ six intensive years of postgraduate psychoanalytic education and supervision, psychoanalysis remains difficult to describe, perhaps in part because it is an experience that is different for everyone. A meaningful psychoanalytic therapy is a co-created experience between two people and will be necessarily unique and deeply personal. It's also hard to put into words because psychoanalysis isn't primarily cognitive.
Generally, psychoanalysis thrives on frequency in the same way that immersion into learning a language affords opportunities for fluency, rather than conversational or academic competency. It is this frequency of sessions that supports a sense of safety and security and possibility for opening into the many dimensions of our self - cognitive, behavioral, relational, emotional, somatic, physiological, - as well as into different self states and states of consciousness. This opening invites powerful connection to our fullest and most vital self. There is also great relief in really knowing with our full being that we don't have to fear our internal world and that we can just be - in our most expansive, creative way.