About Me

I am a Licensed Social Worker in the State of Washington. My education includes a Master’s degree in Social Work from the University of Chicago; a post-graduate certificate in Parent-Infant Psychotherapy from COR-Northwest Family Development Center. Currently I am enrolled as a senior psychoanalytic candidate at the Northwestern Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, training to become a psychoanalyst specializing in British Objects Relations, a branch of psychoanalytic theory that highlights the complexity of earliest emotional life.

I have also completed training as a Listening Mothers group and Reflective Parenting Program facilitator; and training as a Positive Discipline Parent Trainer. Prior to developing a private practice, I worked as a social worker in a variety of mental health and perinatal health settings, providing crisis intervention, health education, advocacy and case management, as well as psychotherapy and counseling. I have worked as a birth and postpartum doula, and as a doula trainer.

All of these work and educational opportunities have created my conviction that our earliest circumstances matter a great deal in how we understand the world. We all begin life as infants, subject to a wide array of experiences, with few tools for making meaning. Our development and our understanding of life are shaped by the unique situations we grow up in. My approach to treatment both respects this fact and encourages inquiry into the nature and usefulness of these early conclusions about life and relationships. Life’s beginnings are important, yet life also offers endless opportunities for new beginnings.I see psychoanalytic psychotherapy and psychoanalysis as opportunities, which invite new growth.

Affiliations

Center for Object Relation - COR-NWFDC
Northwest Alliance for Psychoanalytic Study
Northwestern Psychoanalytic Society and Institute
Postpartum Support International of Washington
Washington State Society for Clinical Social Work