Welcome

Hello and welcome to my website. I am a licensed psychologist with a private practice in Minneapolis. I specialize in adult individual, couples, and group psychotherapy. The information here is intended to help you decide if I might be the right therapist for you. It describes my therapeutic orientation, the range of services I offer, my professional background, and the types of people and issues I see in my practice. As you are reading this, feel free to call me with any questions you have.

Individual Psychotherapy:
As a psychodynamically-oriented therapist, my goal is to create a safe, trusting, respectful, and nonjudgmental environment in which we can engage in a process of collaborative reflection aimed at helping you become more connected and integrated with all parts of your self. It is my belief that with deeper understanding of one's internal world, an enhanced willingness and ability to experience, identify, process, and utilize one's feelings, and an enhanced willingness to trust one's internal compass, people can become more comfortable and confident in their own skin and more free and equipped to live their life in an authentic manner. Thus, the goal is not only to relieve a person's symptoms, but to help them as necessary make more self-congruent decisions, have more fulfilling relationships, and live a more satisfying life.

While we can't change difficult situations that occurred in the past, we can work together to better understand how any long-standing pain, past trauma, fears, or inner conflicts may be impacting you in terms of your current relationships, the expectations, assumptions, and beliefs you bring to your life and relationships, and/or your means of coping such that it could be contributing to your current distress or difficulties. By helping you explore your inner life, we will be in a position to uncover, unpack, and work through long-standing grief, inner conflicts, negative beliefs, and/or behavioral patterns that may be holding you back from experiencing more satisfying relationships and a more fulfilling and meaningful life. If you're looking to achieve a greater sense of inner peace and/or improved relationships, or for support and guidance through a challenging situation, I look forward to working with you to achieve your goals.

Couples Therapy:
As an integrative couples therapist, my goal is to create and maintain a secure holding environment for the couple in which we engage in a collaborative process aimed at redefining the relationship as a trusted and reliable source of security, protection, and comfort for both partners. Consistent with this, I will as indicated strive to enhance you both in your ability to communicate and understand each other's feelings and needs, help you both develop new relationship behaviors based on enhanced attunement, accessibility, and responsiveness, teach you how to de-escalate and repair effectively, and help you to increase your capacity to know and care for each other and your relationship. Over time, you will then be in a position together to provide a secure holding environment for each other.

Group Therapy:
As a group therapist, it is my experience that people who seek help from group therapy tend to have in common a difficulty with establishing and maintaining close and gratifying relationships with others. The purpose of the process therapy group I co-facilitate with my colleague Katrin Christensen-Cowan, LICSW is to help you improve your ability to connect and relate with others, to build more intimate relationships, and to expand your sense of community. Toward this end, our group can give you greater insight into your interactions with others, offer you a safe place to try out new ways of communicating, challenge you to reflect on behaviors and attitudes, and address social anxiety and isolation.

Call or email me for an individual, couple, or pre-group therapy appointment or to ask me any questions you have about the services I offer. I would be happy to speak with you.