Services
About My Clients
If you’re ADHD, autistic, gifted, “twice exceptional,” or otherwise neurodivergent, you’ve got a specialized, high-performance brain. When you’re doing something you love, everything just works. It's the rest of life that's incredibly stressful. We experience higher rates of depression, anxiety, trauma, school refusal, substance abuse--you name it. But, it's not a deficit in you. It's minority stress. Let's work on changing your environment to fit your brain, not the other way around.
My Background and Approach
I worked as a counselor in community mental health for over ten years before opening my private practice. I provided trauma-informed care to parents and kids in complex family reunification cases; ran substance abuse groups; worked mobile crisis teams doing suicide prevention in schools and on the street; provided individual counseling to adults and children in the office and in their homes. It helped me develop a natural, easy-going style. I don't sound like a TV therapist or use much jargon. I practice Solution-Focused Therapy, Narrative Therapy, and Motivational Interviewing. That just means that my goal is always to understand your big mission and the big obstacles to the mission, as you see them. I help you identify your strengths, preferences, skills, and dreams. That's what helps you address your problems in a way that is authentic and comforting to you. My clients usually say that I work really fast, but they feel understood. They're surprised by how quickly they feel better.
My Personal Beliefs and Interests
There's a big problem in the mental health industry with overpathologizing neurodivergence and neurodivergent people yet still "underhelping." Growing up, relationships, parenting, work...all of these things are harder for neurodivergent people in our society. So it pains me when I hear of ND people going to therapy and hearing "You have such great insight! Why are you in counseling?" Or, "Have you tried making a list / making better eye contact / trying harder?" All too often, therapists are really just not competent when it comes to helping ND clients. They don't see the unique strengths that ND people have. They don't see the challenges as ND people experience them. They often just see deficits. If you've read the DSM criteria for autism or ADHD you'll see why. I'm neurodivergent, from a neurodivergent family, raising my own neurodivergent family, so I can't unsee the need for better services for ND people. It's also fun for me. I like weird brains and that's actually healing.