Twenty years in this work taught me one thing ahead of everything else.
If you don’t trust me, it doesn’t matter what I can do, or what modalities we use. No work is actually going to get done.
So that’s where we start, before a single treatment plan gets written. Can you be honest in this room, and do you believe I can handle it when you are?
Some people arrive because somebody else told them to, and that’s fine, because we can build from wherever you actually are.
My first question is usually, “Nobody dragged you here. What’s your reason?”
Plenty of therapy runs on feel. You show up, you talk, you leave, and a year later nobody can say with any certainty whether the thing you came in for actually changed.
We measure instead. I use real assessment data and share my screen so you see the numbers the same moment I do.
Homework gets built with you rather than handed to you. You know your life better than I ever will, and I know the clinical piece.
Pacing counts just as much. Trauma work goes badly when the processing starts before the stability is there, so we build the ground first and go deeper once your system can hold it.
Everybody is welcome here. Everybody.
That’s a theoretical position as much as a personal one. Relational-Cultural Theory holds that people heal in relationship with other people, and twenty years of watching it happen made a believer out of me.
You’ve been handed a lot of opinions about who you are. What I want to know is who you feel like you are underneath them, and which parts of that have been getting no support at all.
Guilt says “I did a bad thing.” Shame says “I am a bad person,” and most people walk in carrying the second one while calling it the first.
Here’s a question almost nobody thinks to ask a therapist: who takes care of you? It’s the question my entire research program is built around.
My doctorate from Simmons University is in clinical leadership and business management with a doctoral focus in traumatology, and the work I present internationally, “Honoring the Impact,” is about clinical resiliency and burnout prevention. Before this practice, I directed large-scale outpatient services and led national clinical clearance initiatives.
These days I also supervise clinicians working toward state licensure and consult with schools, healthcare systems, and corporations on building places where people can do this work without being wrecked by it. And I go to a therapist myself, because of my job, so we all can be better every day.
None of that replaces the caseload. Most days of the week I’m in a room with clients, which is where all the rest of it comes from.
You’re getting a clinician who is tended to.
The adults I see most are women between thirty and fifty carrying complex and relational trauma, and men in their late twenties to mid forties who have never done therapy before and aren’t thrilled to be starting.
With the women, EMDR is often at the center of the work once we’ve built enough stability to hold it. I’m EMDR trained, and I run it as a framework shaped around you rather than a script you have to fit.
With the men, DBT skills usually come first (I’m certified in it), because a nervous system running at full alert can’t think its way calm.
Teens thirteen to seventeen come in through referral, along with their families. My child and adolescent trauma certification (CATP), my training in developmental trauma and attachment in children (TDTAC), and TF-CBT are all pointed at that group, and at giving parents something steadier to stand on.
With over two decades of dedicated clinical practice across high-acuity residential programs, outpatient centers, and private practice, I’m a doctorate-level clinical social worker and traumatologist.
Five of those years were spent with adolescents in residential care, which is where I learned that a guarded kid will tell you the truth eventually, but only on their own schedule.
The doctorate came later, once I wanted to change the conditions clinicians work in as well as the work itself. Private practice came after that, and it’s where I’ve wanted to be the whole time.
Duchess comes to work with me. She’s a certified therapy dog, she’s in the practice logo, and she keeps a bed in the corner of my office that she uses with real commitment.
Some clients want her on the couch with them, and others would rather she stayed put. Both are fine, and she doesn’t take it personally.
The office itself is sage green and full of plants, modeled on my favorite place on Earth, which is a lake in Vermont with lily pads around me and trees and clouds and fresh air.
A lot of people have been asking me for in person lately, which I vibe with. You can meet me there, or online from anywhere in Pennsylvania.
If you’ve read this far, you already know more about how I work than most people know about their therapist after three sessions.
Call me at (570) 293-9467 and tell me what’s going on. We’ll sort out together whether I’m the right person for it, and if I’m not, I’ll point you toward who is.
Duchess will be there. She’ll be asleep.
