You want to feel secure in yourself, your relationships, your body, and your mind. I help clients move beyond insight alone to create meaningful, lasting change.
BASED IN NEWPORT BEACH, AVAILABLE THROUGHOUT CALIFORNIA
What is therapy like with me?
Therapy is a collaborative process shaped around your needs, goals, and experiences. Some sessions may focus on what’s happening in your life right now, while others may explore past experiences that still affect how you think, feel, and respond in the present.
I provide a nonjudgmental space where you can show up honestly and unpack whatever feels most important to you. My approach is flexible and collaborative — while I bring knowledge and clinical expertise, we adjust the process as we go to align with your pace, personality, and goals.
I believe our experiences shape the ways we relate to ourselves, others, and the world around us. Some patterns and reactions may have once helped you cope or protect yourself, but no longer serve the life or relationships you want today. Together, we’ll identify those patterns, better understand where they come from, and begin practicing more adaptive and intentional ways of responding.
Healing and growth are rarely linear. There usually isn’t one breakthrough moment, perfect insight, or single solution that changes everything overnight. Real change happens gradually through awareness, practice, self-understanding, and the willingness to keep showing up — and I’ll support and guide you throughout that process.
Wellness involves both the mind and body.
I believe it’s important to look at your life and wellbeing as a whole. You can learn coping skills, gather insight, and try every strategy recommended by therapists, friends, or social media — and many of those tools can absolutely be helpful. But when your mind and body are stuck in a constant state of stress or overwhelm, it can feel like pouring water into a leaky bucket.
That’s why I take a holistic approach to therapy. Alongside emotional insight and self-understanding, we may also explore ways to create greater safety, regulation, and stability within your nervous system, daily routines, physical health, relationships, and environment. Healing often involves both understanding yourself differently and learning how to support yourself more effectively in everyday life.
Beyond any specific therapy approach or technique, research consistently shows that the relationship between therapist and client plays one of the biggest roles in meaningful change.
Why clients choose me:
I absolutely love what I do. I deeply value building genuine, authentic relationships with my clients. I love the process of connecting with people, understanding their emotional experiences, and working collaboratively toward meaningful change in ways that feel both safe and realistic. Even with my therapist hat on, you will get to know me as a real person. While therapy is always centered around you and your experiences, I also don’t believe therapists need to feel robotic or overly clinical to be effective.
You can expect sessions with me to have some laughs, perhaps some tears, and plenty of “aha” moments. There may even be some cussing, because sometimes, it’s the best way to capture the sentiment of the f@¢%ed up $#*+ we go through. I will never judge you, only join you while we work towards your therapeutic goals.
If you’d like to connect, I’d be happy to schedule a consultation to see whether we’re a good fit. And if we’re not, no pressure and no hurt feelings — I’m always happy to help point people toward resources or referrals that may better support their needs.
MY APPROACH
Therapy is not one-size-fits all. Everything we do will be tailored to you.
Together, we’ll explore what’s happening in your life, identify what feels stuck, and clarify the changes you want to make. Therapy begins with a conversation between two real people. My own experiences in therapy over the years have helped shape me into an empathetic listener and compassionate guide, while also reinforcing something I deeply believe: you are not flawed. Many of the thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that frustrate you today likely developed as ways to protect yourself or adapt to difficult experiences. Together, we can begin understanding those patterns and adjusting what no longer serves you.
Expertise without the stuffiness.
Some therapy experiences can feel rigid or impersonal — long questionnaires, extensive history-taking, weekly homework, or feeling like you have to start at the very beginning before getting to what actually matters to you. While that structure may work well for some people, my approach tends to be more flexible, collaborative, and conversational. I believe therapy should be more than simply talking about problems — it should help you better understand what to do differently when those patterns show up in your everyday life. Alongside emotional insight and exploration, I offer practical guidance, concrete strategies, communication tools, and actionable ways to begin responding differently in your relationships, decisions, and daily routines, starting with our first session.
Treat the cause to improve the symptom.
My work is grounded in attachment theory, psychodynamic, and trauma-informed approaches. I believe our lived experiences shape the way we think, feel, relate, and respond to the world around us. Rather than only focusing on managing symptoms once they appear, I work to understand the deeper patterns and underlying experiences contributing to them in the first place. This is where lasting change happens.
Methods
Attachment Theory
Attachment-based therapy explores how early relationship experiences continue shaping the way you relate to yourself, others, and the world around you today. The ways we learned to seek connection, safety, love, and protection early in life often influence our current relationships, emotional reactions, self-worth, and patterns of communication — even long into adulthood.
This work focuses on helping you better understand those patterns so you can begin responding differently in the present. Together, we may explore themes like trust, emotional safety, boundaries, conflict, vulnerability, and connection in order to help you build healthier, more secure relationships with yourself and others.
Therapy can help you express your needs more clearly, better understand your emotional responses, rebuild trust in yourself and the people around you, and experience deeper, more authentic connection in your relationships.
EMDR
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a therapy approach that helps the brain and nervous system process distressing or overwhelming experiences that may still be affecting you in the present. Past experiences can continue shaping the way you think, feel, react, and move through relationships long after the event itself has passed.
EMDR can be helpful for a wide range of concerns, including trauma, anxiety, panic attacks, phobias, grief, body image issues, chronic stress, performance anxiety, and difficult or disturbing memories. Many clients find that experiences that once felt emotionally overwhelming begin to feel less intense, reactive, or consuming over time.
In addition to processing past experiences, EMDR can also help strengthen positive beliefs about yourself, build emotional resilience, and support more grounded, confident ways of responding moving forward.
Emotionally Focused Therapy
Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) is an attachment-based approach that helps people better understand the emotional patterns and cycles affecting their relationships. Many conflicts are not simply about communication itself, but about deeper needs related to connection, trust, vulnerability, safety, and emotional security.
In therapy, we’ll explore the patterns that may be keeping you stuck in cycles of conflict, emotional distance, defensiveness, people-pleasing, or disconnection. Together, we’ll work toward building more secure, honest, and emotionally connected relationships — both with others and with yourself.
While EFT is widely known as a couples therapy approach, many of its principles can also help improve relationships with family members, friends, coworkers, and other important people in your life by strengthening communication, emotional awareness, and empathy.
Therapy should feel helpful to you for more than one hour a week.
I want you to be able to take what we explore in session and apply it meaningfully to your everyday life.
Over time, many clients begin developing what I like to call their “inner therapist” — a greater ability to understand their emotional responses, communicate more effectively, navigate conflict with intention, and respond to themselves with more awareness and compassion.
Together, we’ll build on your existing strengths while developing practical tools and strategies to help you create meaningful, lasting change in the areas of life that feel most important to you. My goal is to help you build the ability to pause, reflect, and respond differently, even—and especially—outside of session.
Training & Education
I believe being an effective therapist requires continual learning, curiosity, and personal growth. I’m always evolving as a clinician so I can provide thoughtful, evidence-based care that feels tailored to each client’s unique needs and goals.
I continue my education through advanced trainings, conferences, consultation, peer supervision, and ongoing personal therapy and depth work of my own. My experiences both inside and outside of the therapy room continue shaping the way I show up for my clients — with empathy, humility, and a deeper understanding of the healing process.
I believe in this work because I do the work myself.
Doctor of Clinical Psychology (PsyD)
Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT)
Master of Science in Clinical Psychology (MS)
Bachelor of Arts in Social Sciences and Psychology, USC
EMDR Humanitarian Assistance Program: EMDR Training Part I & Part II
Emotionally Focused Therapy Externship: I studied directly under Dr. Sue Johnson herself, one of the leading relationship therapists in the world
Member of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists (CAMFT)
Continuing Education in the latest of anxiety treatment, relationship expertise, rekindling passion, breaking out of the roommate phase, brain and body health (i.e. mental longevity, reducing inflammation, reducing toxic load), grounding techniques, aging, trauma work, poly-vagal theory, and more