Let’s start with something easy. Can you tell us a little about your professional background and areas of focus?
Becoming a psychotherapist has been a life goal of mine, and also a second career. I was employed in the restaurant industry for nearly two decades when I decided I wanted to return to grad school for Mental Health Counseling. I have worked in educational settings from kindergarten to post doc, psychiatric rehabilitation with adults with severe emotional disturbances, with survivors of sexual and intimate partner violence, and youth and adults experiencing homelessness. I've never shied away from helping where it is most needed. Presently, I am working in private practice focusing on life transitions, relationships of all kinds, OCD, and issues affecting the LGBTQIA+ community. In addition to being a therapist, I also manage an outreach program for marginally housed queer youth.
How would you describe your approach to therapy?
I approach individual therapy as a dialogue; my style is conversational and collaborative rather than strictly clinical, always client-centered and trauma informed. I draw from a variety of theoretical backgrounds, including psychoanalysis, family systems, and CBT, depending upon the individual need of the client.
What would your patients say about you?
I've been told I am warm, wise, compassionate, and easy to talk with.
How did you become interested in working with psychedelics including ketamine?
In my early 20's, I experimented with LSD and psilocybin recreationally, and had mostly positive experiences. Fast forward to recent years, I saw the re-emergence of psychedelics within mental health healing contexts, led by leaders in the fields of PTSD and OCD research. I read everything I could get my hands on related to psychedelics, and then embarked upon the opportunity to work with Innerwell and complete intensive training to utilize Ketamine in a therapeutic context.
What excites you most about the future of psychedelics?
Being hands on within the psychedelic renaissance in healing people's trauma and psychic scars through non-ordinary states of consciousness and inward journeys; witnessing the effects at an individual and macro level is exhilerating. The capacity for this medicine to heal trauma, rather than be managed through traditional big pharma and therapy, provides so much hope. I am honored to be part of this.
Enough about work! Let’s try some rapid fire questions;
- First, Where do you live? - New York City, in the Lower East Side.
- What's a perfect afternoon? -Wandering around the wonder that is New York, taking in art and music, discovering a new restaurant.
- Favorite food? Pizza/Pasta - I've never met a potato I didn't like.
- Describe yourself in two words. - Curiouser and curiouser.
