Welcome! I am grateful you are here. Starting therapy can be an intimidating process. Congratulations for making yourself a priority and taking these first steps toward personal growth and transformation. As a therapist, I walk side-by-side with my clients on their healing journey. Utilizing an integrative and collaborative approach, I believe you, the client, to be the expert in your own life. We can work collaboratively as a team by focusing on deconstructing obstacles and overcoming barriers so you feel less stuck, promoting a more authentic, positive quality of life. I bring freedom, respect, empathy, and connection to my clients within the therapeutic space, allowing them to get vulnerable in a safe environment. The relationship between counselor and client must be a strong alliance based on mutual trust, honest communication, and feelings of security. According to research “therapeutic rapport” is the number one predictor in creating positive outcomes from therapy. Therapy is not just an appointment you have once a week. Clients need to invest in themselves outside of therapy to produce sustainable change and growth. 

With great compassion and curiosity, I specialize in working with adolescents, young adults, and adult women exclusively. These are times where many in these groups endure a lot of challenges: including stress, anxiety, depression, executive functioning challenges, emotional dysregulation, trauma, life transitions, relationship issues, low self-esteem, distorted body image, and disordered eating. Through partnering with my client, I create individualized, holistic, and integrative treatment plans. Using a psychodynamic approach informed by a client-centered, strengths-based, solution-focused, and feminist-oriented lens, my therapeutic style to healing and well-being is unique. Simply put: This means I use a variety of approaches that are tailored to best suit your needs. I utilize cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to identify, challenge, and change negative or unhelpful thought patterns and behaviors. This modality can also increase a client’s capacity to respond to stress, pain, and difficult situations through learning to be more flexible and resilient in the face of adversity. I also incorporate mindfulness, Somatic processing techniques, internal family systems (IFS) for unresolved family-of-origin issues and trauma work, as well as dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) for depression, eating disorders, PTSD, ADHD, and substance use disorders. I encourage my clients to be pro-active in creating changes that positively impact the trajectory of their lives. 

Chronic Illness/Chronic Pain Counseling

I work with clients dealing with new medical diagnoses of chronic illness (such as breast cancer, poly-cystic ovary syndrome, or autoimmune disease, etc.) in addition to clients experiencing chronic pain. I understand the frustration that can come with a recent diagnosis—feeling unheard, misunderstood, or unsupported by medical providers, and the challenges of misdiagnoses along the way. Together, we can explore how to navigate health behavior changes, using nutrition as a tool to transform your body’s experience, while incorporating social support, self-care, and exercise to foster healing and resilience. My goal is to offer you support and validation as you move through this challenging time with grace and dignity. 

Sober Curious Counseling

Are you one of the millions of people around the world participating in “Dry January” the voluntary, month-long sobriety challenge? Are you reaping the health benefits thus far and looking forward to continuing this journey? Or, perhaps you have experienced negative consequences around the use of alcohol (or other substances) and want more from your life? You may find yourself contemplating the role alcohol plays in your relationships, your happiness, your emotions, and our society as a collective whole. Do you need alcohol to have fun, socialize, and de-stress? Does the fact that you are asking all these questions make drinking alcohol problematic for you? Maybe. This longing for answers, this questioning your relationship to booze is what Ruby Warrington called in her revolutionary 2019 book, as getting Sober Curious. The author reflects: 

“Far from being integral to our experience of connecting with others, and therefore living a full and happy life, getting drunk is an activity in and of itself: a simple act of altering our mental, emotional, and physical states through imbibing toxic liquor (a substance that…“is literally the same thing we use to fuel rockets and cars”). One that makes us less aware of our surroundings and the people we’re with. And that, as many of us have experienced, can also lead to arguments, fights, texts you regret, terrible sex, and, in the cold, queasy light of the morning after, our feeling utterly, devastatingly alone.” 

If this resonates with you, or maybe even made you a little uncomfortable, you too are sober curious. I consider it a privilege to work with clients on highly ingrained habits which require a thorough re-evaluation of their lifestyle. Let’s discover together what sober curious means for you and whether or not engaging in an alcohol-free life is an appropriate fit. I integrate a harm-reduction approach, utilizing motivational interviewing (MI), and DBT to explore the many possibilities.

Experience

I attended DePaul University and graduated in 2016 with a major in Addiction Studies. In 2020, I completed my Masters in Clinical Mental Health Counseling at Northwestern University. I earned my CADC (addictions license) in 2009 and later, added Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) and National Certified Counselor (NCC) to my repertoire. I have 22 years of continuous sobriety under my belt and enjoy working with other women who are contemplating sober curiosity or even a full recovery (with total abstinence). I am a therapist and clinical fellow here at Balanced Awakening and look forward to meeting you virtually or in-person soon.

Licensure

I am a Clinical Fellow at Balanced Awakening, completing the final steps toward LCPC licensure. I have several years of clinical experience and I am currently accruing additional supervised practice to be eligible for the LCPC credential in Illinois.