My practice is constantly changing and growing with every new person I meet and conversation I have. I’m passionate about people getting to be the primary meaning-makers of their lives, and am always searching for fresh ways of being and working with people that makes this more possible. The most important therapy tradition I have met that supports this commitment is Narrative Therapy.

I first met Narrative Therapy while earning my MSW at the Boston College School of Social Work. I was deeply uncomfortable with the therapy traditions I was being exposed to that saw people who were struggling as somehow sick, abnormal or disordered. It didn’t make sense to me that people were “broken” and needed to be “fixed” or “corrected” by some outside expert just because they were facing problems in their lives.

Narrative therapy — with its maxim “people are not problems, problems are problems” — finally articulated a set of ideas and ethics that I felt did justice to the amazing young people I was working with at the time. I was immediately drawn in to Narrative Therapy’s commitment to valuing each person’s inherent uniqueness over conformity to social norms. It was a therapeutic approach that took social justice seriously in the way it refuses to erase the many social, political, and cultural influences that shape people’s environments, available choices, and relationships with problems.

So here is some of what you can expect from me if we work together. I share this so you might decide if these values and practices sound potentially helpful or interesting to you. These are values I strive to practice, and I will check in with you regularly to learn about the effects of our work together.

I believe people are not defined by the problems they are facing in their lives, and that they deserve to be known for their hopes, dreams, values, skills and intentions. My work is collaborative, which means we work closely together to support your getting to decide what matters most to you and how you prefer to respond to life's challenges.

I will relate to you as the person most knowledgeable about your life and experiences. I will be intently curious in learning from you about what matters to you. I will also bring curiosity to help us unpack the ways whatever problems we’re focused on are affecting your life. I will ask genuine questions from a place of truly wanting to know what you think and believe, and how you might want to improve your life and relationships.

I strive to be caring, respectful and accountable in all my relationships, including those with individuals and families consulting me in my therapy practice. You can expect me to take responsibility for attending to how various privileges, identities, and forms of power might be shaping our conversations and our relationship.

I believe every person is different and inherently unique, with particular histories that shape their experiences of themselves and in relationships. I will work to learn from you about what helps you feel most understood, safe, empowered, and respected. I will not tell you how to think or feel. I will not evaluate you from a position of their being a right way and a wrong way to be, and I will not impose culturally dominant ideas of what is “normal” onto you or your experiences.

We will work together to create shared language and therapeutic practices together that fit for you. In this process, we’ll develop a detailed understanding of how the challenges you’re facing are affecting your life, how they came to be, and what you want for your life instead. As we do this, we’ll help you find ways to reclaim your life so that you can be liking yourself, knowing what’s important to you and why, and living the way that you want.

In our work together, people often find that as we uncover forgotten or hidden stories of their hopes, dreams, values, abilities, skills and purposes in life, they experience new possibilities for their life open up that they could not have imagined beforehand. As these new stories emerge and become richer, people often gain more power and confidence in facing whatever difficult experiences brought them to therapy.