Educational
Experience:
1993 Naropa
University B.A.
in Dance Therapy
1997 University
of Washington at Seattle M.S.W.
2008 University
of the Rockies: Psy.D. Colorado
School of Professional Psychology
1998 University
of California at Berkeley Post-Master's
Clinical Internship
in Social Work
2004 University
of Colorado at Boulder A.P.A. Pre-Doctoral Internship
Work
Experience:
I have worked
with adolescents, families, young adults, and adults in a wide variety of
capacities. I began a private practice in Boulder, Colorado in 1998. During
this time, I also worked as a family and adolescent therapist at the Boulder County Mental Health
Center in a day treatment program and I worked at Denver Children's Home in a
residential treatment program. In 2000, Denver Children's Home (DCH) asked me
to become a full time treatment leader in the long term residential program working with
emotionally disturbed and traumatized adolescents and their families. In these
various treatment capacities, I worked to reduce family conflict, improve
family relationships, and reduce destructive behaviors by increasing effective
and beneficial coping strategies to manage distress. In 2002, I completed my
first training with Dr. Marsha Linehan and created a Dialectical Behavior Therapy
based treatment program at DCH. I began facilitating DBT skills groups at this
time.
In addition to
my work with families and adolescents, I have worked a great deal with young
adults. When I completed my pre-doctoral internship at CU Boulder, I started a DBT group for
the students on campus. My training areas at UC Berkeley and CU Boulder included eating disorder
treatment, self-harm treatment, personality disorders, mood disorders such as
major depression, dysthymia and bipolar disorder, as well as anxiety disorders
such as post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, and
panic disorder. I have been trained to work with substance abuse issues in both
abstinence based and harm reduction models.
In 2005, Aim
House, a transitional living program for young adults, asked me to become program
director for both the
men's and the women's program. As a program director, I integrated a
dialectical behavior therapy skills based approach into the mentoring programs
and worked to teach the participants new, effective coping strategies to assist
them through the process of becoming adults. After becoming a parent myself, I
began working as the clinical director for the women's program at Aim House and continue this
position part time supervising and advising the program's clinical aspects.
Currently, in my
private practice, I
work with individuals, groups, couples and families. I enjoy supporting parents
to better understand how to communicate effectively and set limits well with
their teenagers and young adults. Family therapy is one of my strongest focus
areas as I am passionate about shifting destructive dynamics into healthier,
more functional patterns that encourage family members to get along and talk
more openly together. I enjoy working with adolescents, young adults and adults
in an in-depth, long term approach to understanding unconscious influences that
interfere with their ability to make constructive, conscious choices.
Group
psychotherapy is a strong focus for me. I facilitate a training group and group
seminar at the Psychological Health and Psychiatric services at the University
of Colorado at Boulder. I attend the American Group Psychotherapy Association
conference annually and have presented at this conference on adolescent group psychotherapy
and working effectively with group resistances. Group psychotherapy is a
powerful medium for change. The rich dynamics that groups cultivate offer very
dynamic and character-changing opportunities; sometimes, I have found, the
effects that groups provide can be more profound than individual therapy alone.
Groups:
Tuesdays (Weekly) 11:30 -1:00 DBT
Group for Young Adults (ages 18 - 27)
Tuesdays (Weekly) 1:15 - 2:45 DBT
Group for Adults
Thursdays
(Weekly) 5:05 - 6:30 Psychodyanmic,
Mixed-Gender, Adult Group
Thursdays
(Weekly) 3:30 - 5:00 DBT
Group for Teenagers (ages 13 - 17)
Teaching and
writing are parts of my career that I am passionate about as well. I have
served as an adjunct faculty at the Naropa University teaching family process,
human development, and therapeutic relationship courses. I am a guest lecturer
for Naropa graduate programs, University of Denver Social Work school, and
frequently give presentations locally on effective parental communication, the
adolescent brain, and eating disorders. I published chapter titled, Mothering
in the Moment, and Large Group Process, in Brilliant Sanity. My dissertation addressed a modern
psychoanalytic approach to the treatment of anorexia nervosa.
I provide
services for clients from Boulder, Longmont, Lafayette, Louisville, Lyons, and
Niwot.
Links:
Psychology Today
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