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During this time I will be conducting therapy sessions via video conferencing. Please see the COVID-19 menu listing for details.
I've been a psychotherapist and licensed clinical psychologist for over twenty years.

During this time I've helped hundreds of adults and adolescents make changes that have transformed their lives:

Using the best of both psychodynamic and cognitive-behavioral therapeutic tools, I've helped them recover from anxiety or depression, enhance school, social, or work performance, learn how to develop and maintain healthy relationships, and eliminate longstanding, self-destructive behaviors such as substance abuse.

While pursuing a psychoanalytic and psychodynamic course of study at California Graduate Institute (now the Chicago School), I was fortunate to have been the first student in my graduate school invited to train at the respected Wright Institute of Los Angeles. At the same time I maintained a focus on child development at the Early Childhood Center at Cedars-Sinai Hospital, where I led mother-infant, mother-toddler, and single parents' groups. I developed a seminar series for single women considering motherhood, several parenting and divorce groups, and was a provider of clinical services for survivors of trauma at Barrington Psychiatric Center. You can read more about my academic background and clinical affiliations in those sections of this site.
I can say that I've enjoyed a rich and diverse academic and clinical foundation as a professional. I learned the best that psychoanalytic theory has to offer, alongside the most current evidence-based cognitive and behavioral interventions. However, what you need to know about whether or not I can be helpful to you or your teen is more complicated than a list of qualifications. The information here will give you a peek into me and my practice, and perhaps lead to the next step, which is to meet and learn first-hand how well we work together.

In truth, the therapist who can help you the best comes to her profession with something that isn't easy to teach--- an instinctive awareness that every individual has an inner world that's often at odds with the external one they live in.

I believe my role as your therapist should be to enter this world fearlessly, and to use my training to help you make sense of this. Ideally, you'll feel "known" in a way that you haven't, before.
My way of doing this---in-depth therapy--- has a long history: this method helps a therapist get to know her patients on a deeper level, and facilitates their understanding of themselves, as well as their ability to see beneath the surface of behaviors. "Going inside" in this way will help you understand the source of your problems. which is essential for change to occur. An individualized set of cognitive-behavioral tools to use in everyday decision-making will make changes last.

One of my main areas of interest is couple therapy. I help partners repair their relationships without returning again and again to a recitation of the hurts of the past. For most couples, focusing from the first session forward on how to form a healthier partnership, rather than on where to place blame, makes the therapy experience much less stressful than expected.

Therapy often begins as a result of a crisis, but it can also be a first step toward creating a more satisfying life, whether you're beginning at sixteen or sixty. It's a great journey, that can be as long or as short as you want to make it.