My therapeutic approach involves understanding, compassion, exploration and insight. The psychotherapeutic relationship provides a safe environment for a person to share and reflect on his or her experience, which in turn allows for increased self-awareness and growth. Greater self-awareness allows us to attend in new ways to our day-to-day life and the problems we face. In my experience, when we deepen our ability to reflect and stay connected to ourselves, we develop new ways to cope with emotions and stress, and a greater ability to connect in relationships with others.

When treating eating disorders, though my clinical orientation is primarily psychodynamic and largely informed by contemporary psychoanalytic theory, I integrate this approach with more active, cognitive behavioral and dialectical behavioral interventions as needed. What this means is that when treating a symptom or problem, I believe in directly intervening with the symptom, while at the same time understanding the meaning that symptom has for each person. In psychotherapy, I pay close attention to understanding and exploring what function the symptom serves in the person's life.

I approach my clinical work with the belief that we come to develop a sense of self out of our relationship to others. In other words, our sense of self develops always in a context -- family, group, community, culture -- and continues to evolve in and respond to these relationships. Consequently, an important aspect of my clinical approach involves paying close attention to the relationship between client and therapist. By noticing and exploring what is happening in the therapeutic relationship, it becomes clearer how to help clients make desired changes in their relationships.

My clinical practice includes helping individuals with: