Throughout my experience, I have found a passion working with a diverse group of people throughout their developmental lifespan of infancy to adulthood. My clients have typically experienced some form of distressful situation in their life and in sessions, we work together to find strength and resilience through those difficult situations. I have specialized in working with children and adolescents, along with their family to address concerns of mood and ability, while helping to restore family connections. During my time, I have also grown a fondness for working with adults as they parent and manage their own adult lives. I have taken my understanding of attachment and relational dynamics to work with adults who might be working to heal past traumas or relational ruptures, in addition to addressing current issues related to mood, interpersonal dynamics, personality disruptions, or other barriers that may be impacting the individual at home or at work. 

Services:

I offer both psychotherapy and psychological assessments in English and/or Spanish based on the individual or family's needs. The bulk of my practice centers around working with children and adults on family related issues. Overall, I specialize in treating complex developmental trauma, depression, anger, adhd, anxiety, autism spectrum disorder, developmental delays, relational disruptions and interpersonal difficulties, personality disruptions, along with issues related to LGBTQ+, and questions of gender and identity presentation. I also offer Supervision to training to doctoral psychology students. 

Psychotherapy: 

I offer individual and family therapy in order to provide a safe place for the client to open up about the problems that may be impacting their life. I work to build a strong therapeutic alliance with my clients in order to really understand them and their needs. I never presume to know everything about a person, but instead use various forms of psychotherapy to help the individual begin to understand themselves. I work from an attachment and psychodynamic lens and use a relational and collaborative approach in order determine individualized goals for the person and/or family to create treatment plans that would best reach those stated goals.  

Depending on the age and ability of the client in therapy, I use forms of play therapy, sand tray therapy, expressive arts therapy, talk therapy, psychoanalysis, while also integrating elements of CBT, DBT, dyadic and family sessions. 

Psychological Assessments and Evaluations:

I offer comprehensive psychological assessments and work from a therapeutic and collaborative framework to assess each individual in a way that addresses their specific assessment questions. 

When assessing children, I gather background information and evaluate the child's developmental progress, learning, and social emotional stressors that may be making it hard for the child to function on a daily basis. In adult assessments, I work to understand the person's background history, along with their individual needs and develop a battery of testing to answer their specific questions and address their concerns related to their difficulty functioning in the world. These evaluations can be related to clarifying diagnosis, immigration issues, or parent-child relational questions. 

During the assessment process, I collect information from the individual, parents, couple, guardian, school, medical providers and/or other interested parties to determine the person's needs and make recommendations for the best ways to support them in the various systems in which they operate. This process typically involves an intake meeting to gather background information and identify specific questions for the evaluation. Then the individual participates in several testing sessions to assess their level of functioning and abilities based on the assessment goals. Afterwards, the individual takes a break from testing while the measures are scored and interpreted and an assessment report is written. The person is then brought back for a feedback session to share assessment outcomes and recommendations that have been identified to support the individual's functioning. The assessment process takes place over several weeks (at a minimum) and the time and fees of each are dependent on the individual's assessment needs. 

Trainings:

I am available to conduct a variety of trainings and enjoy talking to groups who are interested in understanding people they may interact with to increase their level of knowledge and awareness.  Training topics can be individually tailored to fit the audience, however in the past I have done trainings on Attachment and Trauma, Immigration, Latino culture and client populations, LGBTQ+ and questions of Gender Identity, Psychological Assessments, Community Mental Health, and Parent Education on a variety of topics including Parenting Classes utilizing the Triple P, Positive Parenting model. 

Please contact me for further information.