My Background
As a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in both Oregon (license # 7647) and California (license # 65076), I have been working clinically with children and families for over 15 years. As a child psychotherapist, a parenting coach, and a parent myself, I understand that parenting is more than just a set of skills and strategies, but also one of the most profound personal and relational journeys that we will ever experience.
Through an array of clinical and therapeutic approaches, I have integrated the most useful and comprehensive parenting tools into a single approach that speaks directly to our children’s emotion-focused brain to strengthen the parent-child relationship, and help our kids self-regulate their big emotions when they need it most.
My professional credentials include:
Certified Synergetic Play Therapist
Synergetic Play Therapy combines therapeutic play with mindfulness, attachment, nervous system regulation and interpersonal neurology. Synergetic Play Therapy works by helping children develop new neurological brain patterns that allow for new ways of responding to challenges and stress in their everyday lives.
Learn more about Synergetic Play Therapy at the Synergetic Play Therapy Institute: https://synergeticplaytherapy.com/
Certified Hakomi Therapist
The Hakomi method is a mindfulness-based, somatic psychotherapy that places trust in the body’s innate, internal selfhood to naturally unfold toward greater wholeness and integration. Hakomi utilizes mindfulness and experiential internal study to help shepherd the body’s organic connection to an individual’s own aliveness, and allows emotional wounds to heal through greater self-illumination within a safe, therapeutic relationship.
Learn more about Hakomi Therapy at the Hakomi Institute: https://hakomiinstitute.com/
Certified Neurolinguistic Programing Practitioner
Neurolinguistic Programing (NLP) is an approach to personal change that focuses on reorganizing neural patterns through adaptive communication in order to recognize new choices and possibilities. By heightening our understanding of the meaning we create through our verbal and non-verbal communication, we can deepen all of our relationships and create better emotional resilience, especially with our children.
Learn more about Neurolinguistic Programing at The NLP Center of New York: https://www.nlptraining.com
Certified Hypnotherapist
Hypnotherapy is a method of soothing and quieting the conscious mind so that we can speak directly to the largely unconscious, more feeling-based areas of the brain. In children, these feeling-based areas of the brain are often more directive of their experience in world, and hypnotherapy techniques can be utilized to speak directly to a child’s limbic system to regulate overwhelming emotions.
Learn more about hypnotherapy at the Hypnotherapy Training Institute: https://www.hypnotherapy.com
Trained in Emotionally Focused Therapy
Emotion Focused Therapy draws upon attachment theory to restore relational connection and trust through increasing vulnerability and emotional safety. As parents, we can learn how to shift our own emotional dysregulation in moments when our children are distressed, and instead leverage our child’s meltdown to create an even deeper connection, easing the tension with safety rather than making it worse with threats.
Learn more about Emotionally Focused Therapy at the San Francisco Center for Emotionally Focused Therapy: https://sfceft.com
Trained in Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions
Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions (SPACE) is a therapeutic approach designed to help parents reduce accommodation of their child’s anxiety symptoms and increase supportive responses. This method enhances the child’s ability to manage anxiety, fostering resilience and encouraging more adaptive functioning in everyday life.
Learn more about Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions at SPACE Treatment: https://www.spacetreatment.net