I have lived and worked in Western North Carolina for the better part of the last 23 years and am committed to having a counseling practice that benefits individuals, families and the community that I live in.

As long as we have had psychoanalysis, we have also had vibrant and vocal debate regarding what psychoanalysis is. I have come to believe in the essence of psychoanalysis vs. the strict adherence to the traditional “tools” of psychoanalysis. To me, the essence of psychoanalysis is any form of treatment that aims to help a person truly know themselves and integrate the subconscious with the conscious self. And for dissociated clients, to integrate the separate and important self-states. In other words, the goal of psychoanalysis is to help all parts of us in working together as a team.

Prior to the last decade in private practice, I worked for thirteen years with highly traumatized and very low resourced populations. These thirteen years included wilderness, residential treatment, therapeutic foster care, day treatment, and intensive in home settings.  I worked full time in these settings while simultaneously obtaining my Master’s Degree in Mental Health Counseling. I have found that these experiences allow me to hold space for stories and emotional experiences that few outpatient therapists can.

I have received training in the theory and practice of modern psychoanalysis but identify more broadly as a relationally psychoanalytically informed psychotherapist. Relational psychoanalysis differs from classical psychoanalysis in many ways. Relational psychoanalysis aims to heal and integrate relational trauma through safe and containing relationship in treatment. Where classical psychoanalysis requires the patient to come three to five times a week, lie on the couch and involves a lot of interpretation from the analyst, relational psychoanalysis follows the client’s lead and honors where the patient is in deciding on interventions. Interventions are unique and adaptable to each patient’s needs.

I believe that my clients teach me more about how to help them than any book or theory or training program ever can, but for the psychoanalysis geeks out there: I rely on the great work of many brave and pioneering psychoanalysts including Spotnitz, Sullivan, Winnicott, Klein, Kernberg, Kohut, Ferenczi, Ainsworth and Bowlby to inform this clinical dance between client and therapist.

I currently provide clinical supervision for clinicians interested in pursuing a contemporary psychoanalytic practice of their own. My goal in this supervision is to support these clinicians in trusting themselves and trusting their clients. I am disinterested in being a gatekeeper or telling clinicians how they “should” work. Instead, I am interested in helping them notice what is going on in the room and within themselves and how to make decisions based on that noticing.

I earned my Bachelor's Degree in Experiential Education at Prescott College. I hold a Master's Degree in Mental Health Counseling and full licensure as a Clinical Mental Health Counselor Supervisor in the State of NC.  I have received further psychoanalytic training through the Modern Psychoanalytic training program offered through the Philadelphia School Of Psychoanalysis and am in the process of pursuing the Psychoanalytic Certification through the Colorado Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies. Psychoanalytic training requires years of intensive coursework in addition to one’s own analysis and psychoanalytic supervision.

I have received and continue to receive psychoanalytic supervision from Dr. Stephen Ellis M.S.W., B.C.D., Ph.D., NCPsy.A. Dr. Stephen Ellis is the former Executive Director of the Philadelphia School of Psychoanalysis and studied with Dr. Gerald Lucas at the Institute for Modern Psychoanalysis in New York City. He also participated in Training Groups with Dr. Hyman Spotnitz, founder of the Modern Psychoanalytic approach to psychotherapy.

I am currently facilitating Psychoanalytically Informed continuing education and consultation opportunities in Asheville through Asheville Analytic Thought.