Services

Telehealth and Walk and Talk therapy in Maryland for trauma, reproductive mental health, parents, and helping professionals to heal, find wholeness, and thrive.

My Approach

I apply research in interpersonal neurobiology, polyvagal theory, and attachment theory to create a gentle, trauma-informed, and evidenced-based healing environment. Using mind-body healing approaches including Internal Family Systems, Brainspotting, mindfulness, self compassion, and somatic psychotherapy, we co-create a path towards healing that guides you through releasing old patterns that no longer serve you, cultivate curiosity and kindness towards all parts of you, and step into embodied wholeness.

Telehealth Therapy

Serving all of Maryland via a secure, online, telehealth platform called Therapy Portal. TherapyPortal.com is a virtual patient portal, allowing clients to securely join video telehealth sessions, manage appointments, receive appointment reminders, receive documents, and complete paperwork.

You will need a computer, tablet, or smartphone, internet connection, webcam, and microphone. Headsets or earbuds can help increase privacy. Choose a safe, private and quiet location in Maryland for your telehealth session with access to reliable internet or cell service that supports video meetings.

Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy

IFS is a transformative tool that conceives of every human being as a system of protective and wounded inner parts led by a core Self. We believe the mind is naturally multiple and that is a good thing. Just like members of a family, inner parts are forced from their valuable states into extreme roles within us. Self is in everyone. It can’t be damaged. It knows how to heal. 

IFS is a non-pathologizing evidence-based psychotherapy, helping people heal by accessing and healing their protective and wounded inner parts. IFS creates inner and outer connectedness by helping people first access their Self and, from that core, come to understand and heal their parts. It is also a way of understanding personal and intimate relationships and stepping into life with the 8 Cs of Self leadership: confidence, calm, compassion, courage, creativity, clarity, curiosity, and connectedness.

We start by identifying a target part or trailhead, focusing our attention inside ourselves to notice how this part is showing up now the form of an image, memory, body sensation, emotion, or intuitive knowing, checking to see how we feel towards it, unblending from concerned parts that are blocking our access to Self, befriending the part, learning about it’s positive intention for us, how it has helped us survive, how it came to take on this job in the inner protective system, what it’s afraid would happen if it didn’t do this job, asking permission to help the vulnerable or wounded part it protects, witnessing the wounded part from the 8 Cs of Self, reparenting, retrieving and updating to present, unburdening the painful feelings or beliefs it took on, and integration.

Brainspotting Therapy

Brainspotting is a powerful mind and body therapy that reduces and resolves troubling symptoms. The therapy relies on the connected relationship and dual attunement between the client and therapist. Brainspotting works from the principle of where you look affects how you feel. The position of your eye helps recall situations and your feelings change depending on the direction you look.

We have 100 billion neurons in our brain that fire around 10 times per second. As we experience daily life, typical and even difficult events are able to be fully processed to completion in our brain and will not cause ongoing stress or challenges.

In situations where a real or perceived threat is experienced, the amygdala activates survival instincts of fight, flight, or freeze. When the brain is overwhelmed and not able to fully process an event, the traumatic sights and sounds remain encapsulated or “stuck” in our brain as we experienced them at that time.

How you would know if you were stuck? Present day events and interactions would be informed or even dictated by this trauma “capsule” and the past experiences and feelings held there.

Brainspotting is a physiological approach that has psychological consequences. It allows you to access the deepest part of your brain subcortically and heal on what appears to be at a reflexive or cellular level in the Central Nervous System.

It stops the cycle of negative beliefs, feelings, and actions on a mind and body level. What this means is you will remember the event but will not have any emotional activation when revisiting the memory. If we wrote your story down and then engaged in Brainspotting, the story doesn’t change but how you feel about it will change in a positive way. Brainspotting appears to stimulate, focus, and activate the body’s inherent capacity to heal itself from trauma.

What is like to engage in the Brainspotting process?

• A topic you would like to work on will be selected and often we will use Biolateral sound to enhances the brain’s processing abilities.
•  I will guide you to get in touch with how the topic is activated in your body when you focus on it (tight chest, pounding heart, sweaty palms) This activation is called your felt sense which brings awareness to the inside of your body including sensation, energy, and emotions. The felt sense moves focus from the outside world in to the internal world and experience inside your body and what is present for you in the moment.
• Next we will find the fixed point in space (Brainspot) that is most closely associated with this felt sense that will help you access the deep subcortical part of your brain, allowing for processing and creating forward movement in the trauma healing. You will discover a different understanding of the past events while decreasing or eliminating distressing thoughts and feelings.

You are in control of your healing journey. I will be present and attuned to your process and trust you will go where you need to in order to heal. There is no right way or one way to do Brainspotting so everything you experience has value.

Walk and Talk Therapy

Take your therapy session outside and access the healing benefits of joyful movement and time in nature! Walk and talk therapy can be added on as an adjunct to telehealth work, or it can be the primary location for our work together. I offer both in-person and virtual walk and talk therapy. In-person walk and talk therapy is available at select times at the following locations in the Baltimore area. For virtual walk and talk therapy, cellular service and a known location in Maryland you feel comfortable walking or spending time in (such as your neighborhood, a local park or walking path) is required. In the case of inclement weather, your session will continue as scheduled via telehealth at your home or chosen private, indoor location in Maryland.