Services Provided
Psychotherapy is a unique experience, in that it is acceptable and encouraged that you share all of your thoughts and feelings, to include those that you might more typically withhold in other contexts. Ideally, in therapy, you will have an experience of feeling affirmed/acknowledged, thoroughly listened to, and seen as a complex human being. That said, it can take a long time for a person to feel comfortable and free enough to share oneself so fully, and it is important that this be respected. There are many reasons why sharing of oneself can be difficult, and this difficulty in of itself can be a useful area to explore. Plus, for all of us, there is always a lot that we do not yet know about ourselves.
There are many reasons as to why people seek therapy. You may be someone who is experiencing heightened anxiety, depression, eating/body related disorders/distress, diminished self-esteem, intrusive thoughts, panic, grief, loss, a recent traumatic event, insidious trauma of various forms throughout your life (misattunement, microaggressions, etc.), a sense of detachment or alientation, somatic issues (i.e. physical pain that may have psychological causes), relationship difficulties, and/or family difficulties, among many other possibilities. More than likely, you are experiencing a blend of various difficulties.
I tend to de-emphasize diagnosis. It is not that I do not believe that you are experiencing various difficult symptoms or that I reject diagnosis entirely; plus, there may be select diagnostic categories that are important to you with respect to how you understand yourself. But, there are complex meanings behind why you are having your particular experiences, rising from the full context of your life. Genes and biology may play a role, but so may familial experiences, early developmental experiences, your immediate social environment (past and present), larger societal factors, traumatic or impactful experiences, your unique way of perceiving the world, and any other number of factors that may intermingle and result in why you are as you are.
"Goals" for therapy may not be so easily defineable, and they cannot be captured in a treatment plan in in the way that a medical concern may be addressed. Plus, goals change over time, people are not entirely aware of what they are looking for until they start to notice a shift, and progress is rarely linear. But, some possible long-term goals of therapy *might" include: improved self-esteem, experiencing more of a sense of purpose, feeling more able to operate and think in a more flexible, feeling more able to access/name/feel a range of emotions without becoming destabilized, feeling more comfortable in your body, feeling more at peace in your relationship with food, feeling more connected to yourself and/or to others, feeling more compassion toward yourself, feeling more settled with respect to any traumas or losses, experiencing a wider sense of perspective, and feeling more able to tolerate the inherent ambiguities of life.
While I am not taking anyone new under age 18, I do like to note that I have the experience of working with children, in the sense that this work informs my understanding of the developmental trajectory. Also, I am queer/LGBTQAI+ -affirming, neurodiversity-affirming, and inclusive of all body sizes.