Who I Treat

Human development is a lifelong process. The struggles we face at eight look different from those at eighteen, forty, or eighty—yet certain themes echo across the lifespan: the need to be known, the challenge of managing difficult feelings, the work of forming identity, the complexity of relationships.

I work with clients across age groups and relationship configurations, adapting my approach to meet developmental needs while maintaining the same core commitment: to understand what hurts, why it persists, and what it asks of you.

Children

Children communicate through play, behavior, and relationship. While adults can often describe their inner experience in words, children show us what they’re struggling with through how they engage with toys, games, stories, and the therapeutic relationship itself.

Play therapy provides a developmentally appropriate space for children to express and work through difficult experiences. Through carefully attuned observation and participation, I help children process trauma, manage anxiety, navigate family changes, and develop healthier ways of relating.

Work with children always involves parents. I meet regularly with parents to help you understand your child’s inner world and to support you in responding in ways that promote healing and growth. Sometimes family sessions or parent guidance becomes the primary mode of treatment.

Common reasons parents bring children to therapy:

Anxiety, fears, or worries that interfere with daily life
Behavioral difficulties at home or school
Difficulty managing emotions or frequent meltdowns
Social struggles or peer relationship problems
Reaction to family changes (divorce, loss, new siblings)
Trauma or adverse experiences
Academic underperformance despite capability

About Child Therapy

Child therapy looks different from adult therapy. Sessions often involve play, art, storytelling, and games rather than conversation. This isn’t just to keep children engaged—it’s because play is the language through which children naturally process their experiences.

Progress may be visible in behavior changes, emotional regulation, and the child’s relationship with you—often before the child can articulate what’s changed.

The Adolescent Challenge

Adolescence involves navigating between childhood and adulthood—often feeling caught between two worlds. The developmental tasks are enormous: forming identity, separating from parents while staying connected, managing intense emotions, navigating peer relationships and romantic interest, and beginning to answer the question “Who am I?”

Therapy provides a space apart from parents and peers where adolescents can explore these questions with someone who takes them seriously.

Adolescents

Working with teenagers requires respecting their developing autonomy while remaining connected to parents. I work to build a genuine therapeutic relationship with the adolescent—one where they feel I am their therapist, not an extension of parental concern, while keeping parents appropriately informed and involved.

Adolescent therapy is more conversational than child therapy but often incorporates creative approaches, technology, and flexibility about how we use our time together. I meet adolescents where they are rather than expecting them to engage like adults.

Issues adolescents commonly bring to therapy:

Depression, anxiety, or mood instability
Identity questions, including gender and sexuality
Self-harm or suicidal thoughts
Family conflict and communication breakdown
Peer relationships, bullying, social anxiety
Academic pressure and perfectionism
Substance use exploration
Processing trauma or difficult experiences

Adults

Adult individual therapy is the heart of my practice. It’s here that the full depth of psychodynamic work can unfold: exploring the patterns that repeat across your life, understanding how your past shaped your present, developing insight into your internal world, and working through conflicts in the context of our therapeutic relationship.

Adults come to therapy for many reasons. Sometimes there’s a clear precipitant—a loss, a crisis, a diagnosis, a relationship ending. Other times, it’s a longer-building sense that something isn’t working: recurring depression, persistent anxiety, relationships that follow familiar painful patterns, or a nagging feeling that life isn’t what it could be.

Young Adults (18-30)

Navigating the transition to adulthood: career identity, romantic relationships, separating from family of origin, managing independence, and consolidating a sense of self.

Adults (30-50)

Midlife complexities: career shifts, parenting challenges, marriage or relationship issues, caring for aging parents, reassessing life choices, and confronting mortality.

Mature Adults (50-65)

The second half of life: retirement transitions, empty nest, becoming grandparents, health changes, legacy questions, and finding meaning in later adulthood.

For All Adults

The depth-oriented questions remain constant: Who am I? Why do I suffer in the ways I do? What do my patterns reveal about me? How can I live more fully?

Couples

Couples therapy is not simply individual therapy with two people in the room. The relationship itself becomes the patient. I work with couples to understand the patterns that keep you stuck, the unspoken expectations and unmet needs that fuel conflict, and the ways you each contribute to the difficulties between you.

Most couples arrive in crisis or near it—years of accumulated frustration, repeated arguments that never resolve, distance that’s grown over time, or a betrayal that’s shattered trust. The immediate goal is often to reduce conflict and restore some stability. But lasting change requires going deeper: understanding the internal worlds each partner brings, the attachment patterns that shaped your expectations, and the unconscious dynamics that play out between you.

I work with married couples, unmarried partners, same-sex couples, and couples at any stage—from newly committed to considering separation. Whether you’re trying to save a struggling relationship, strengthen a good one, or clarify whether to stay or go, couples therapy can help.

A Note on Discernment

Not all couples who enter therapy are trying to stay together. Sometimes the work is about gaining clarity: understanding what happened, acknowledging what’s true, and making a conscious decision about whether to repair or separate. I support couples through this discernment process without pushing in either direction.

Common Issues in Couples Therapy

Communication breakdown
Frequent or unresolved conflict
Infidelity or betrayal
Emotional disconnection
Sexual difficulties
Parenting disagreements
Major life transitions
Differing values or life goals
Rebuilding after crisis

Families

Family therapy recognizes that individuals exist within relational systems. The way a family operates—its communication patterns, role structures, boundaries, and unspoken rules—shapes the experience of each member. Sometimes the most effective intervention isn’t working with the symptomatic individual alone, but with the family system as a whole.

I offer family therapy when difficulties involve interactions between family members, when a child or adolescent’s symptoms are best understood in family context, or when a significant event (divorce, loss, illness, disclosure) has disrupted the family system and requires joint processing.

Family sessions may involve the entire family or various combinations depending on what’s needed. I help family members understand each other’s perspectives, communicate more effectively, establish healthier boundaries, and develop patterns that support everyone’s wellbeing.

Parent-Child Conflicts

When the relationship between parent and child has become strained, reactive, or stuck.

Blended Families

Navigating the complexities of stepparents, stepsiblings, and multiple household structures.

Family Transitions

Divorce, remarriage, new babies, launching children, loss, illness, or major changes.

“The afternoon of human life must also have a significance of its own and cannot be merely a pitiful appendage to life’s morning.”

— C.G. Jung

Elders (65+)

Later life brings its own developmental tasks and challenges. Retirement, physical changes, loss of spouse or peers, changing family roles, confronting mortality, and the question of life review all create opportunities for psychological work.

I welcome older adults into therapy and resist the common assumption that psychological change isn’t possible later in life. Some of the most meaningful therapeutic work happens when there’s less pressure to perform and more permission to reflect on what a life has meant.

I work with elders on depression and anxiety, grief and loss, family relationship issues, adjustment to health changes, caregiver stress, and existential and end-of-life concerns. I also offer consultation to family members struggling to support an aging parent.

In-Person and Telehealth Options

In-Person

Sessions at my Westlake Village office provide a contained, confidential space designed for therapeutic work. In-person sessions can offer a deeper sense of presence and connection.

1800 Bridgegate Street, Suite 108
Westlake Village, CA 91361

Telehealth

Video sessions are available for clients throughout California and Oregon. Telehealth provides flexibility and access for those who cannot attend in person due to distance, health, schedule, or preference.

Licensed in California & Oregon