You are more than a problem to be solved.

Chasing Relief

As you seek support, you’ll encounter a story that unwanted feelings are pathological, an illness to be eradicated by taking medication, relentlessly policing your thoughts, and consuming a never-ending supply of self-care products and services.

That story keeps you problem-focused and on the defensive. It compounds your pain by casting it as a personal failure or biological defect. What's more, it can obscure sources of distress - personal, social, and systemic - by focusing solely on how well you adjust to and cope with their effects.

Injury, Not Illness

The fact is we are routinely coerced into splitting up and compartmentalizing ourselves, ignoring our needs, and foreclosing on the things that matter: Prioritize professional success at all costs. Expect from a partner what it takes a community to provide. Fight or flee at the first sign of conflict. Neglect or displace your need for meaning and purpose.

These messages surround and affect you. Coupled with individual experiences of loss, trauma, and/or oppression, resulting distress can be overwhelming. It’s easy to get stuck.

My Approach

Your distress has its own story to tell. Rather than a problem to be solved, it is a message to be received - one that contains important clues to rediscovering, reclaiming, and reintegrating parts of yourself that have been deprioritized, dislocated, and disallowed.

At the core of my approach is the belief that the better you understand your whole self, the more skilled at effecting lasting change you will become. A broadened perspective and enhanced awareness will generate choices you didn’t know you have.

This approach is proactive - it helps you anticipate and effectively prepare for the challenges ahead while keeping the things that matter front and center. Life feels less like something happening to you and more like something you’re taking part in.

I am an active partner in the therapeutic process. I ask questions, share ideas, and help keep us organized and focused. With compassion and curiosity, I will challenge you to build on your strengths, fortify systems of support, and develop the skills necessary to disrupt problems of living and recenter your potential.

My professional experience is rooted in work with runaway homeless youth, queer communities, perpetrators of harm, and persons who have experienced traumas of all kinds. I studied queer theory, art, and psychology at Sarah Lawrence College before completing my education at New York University.

Specialized Practice - Crystal Methamphetamine

For gay men wanting to slow or stop using crystal methamphetamine, effective support can be difficult to find. One-treatment-fits-all addiction programs founded on precepts of powerlessness and substance use as ‘moral defect’ may complicate healing or worse yet, cause significant harm.

I approach problem use with attention turned to unmet needs. Together, we can accurately identify and address the personal, social, and structural circumstances that led to problem use in the first place.

For a clearer sense of my approach to substance use treatment, click here.