After we’ve had an intake call, I’m going to send some forms with information about the practice, informed consent, and an intake form to gather more important information I may not have gotten in our 15 minute consult.

It helps the most when clients fill this information out at least 1-2 days before our first session to help me be prepared for our first meeting.

If you’re not able to get them done by our first session, we’ll set some time aside to fill them out and discuss any questions you have.

Other then that, be ready to chat about your goals for our work together as I get to know you better.

Feel free to bring any fidgets, writings, or people that will make you feel comfortable in our first meeting.

This can look differently depending on your goals but the main pieces I like to tackle in our first session are:

• Understanding your thoughts, feelings, and desires for therapy

• Learning about your identities and history that feels pertinent to our goals (this may include understanding more about experiences of trauma within the systems we live in)

• Getting to know you better - who your supports are and what you love to do

I am typically an unstructured, consent-focused therapist, so I like to start sessions with a check-in/understanding access needs for our session and follow up with “Where would you like to start?”

I have options of topics we can focus on, but I want you to directly let me know to feel invested in our time together and get what you’re wanting out of our sessions.

If we’re doing a more focused therapy, like EMDR, I will usually start out with a check-in to see if there’s anything you’d like to talk about/reflect on before we start reprocessing; then we spend the remainder of the time working through our selected memory.

I tend to ask about the past to understand the present and try to learn more about what your experiences feel like when you’re discussing them. This can look like asking questions such as “What does that feel like in your body?” or “What was that like?”

Towards the end of our time together, I like to finish in a grounded state/set up aftercare so you can leave our time ready to take on the next task. This can look like us taking some deep breaths or doing a relaxation exercise in the last 5-10 minutes of a session.

Did I miss anything? If you have any more questions about this, you can feel free to ask at our initial intake or email me.

It is so important to me that you take care of your bodymind in our time together; whether that’s having a snack as we talk or having your animals/a fidget toy nearby, I want you to honor your needs to be able to fully access what you need.

I wish I had a magic ball to predict this!

It’s truly dependent on what your goals are and how much you’re willing to practice what we do in session outside of the therapy space.

Some of my clients complete their goals within a few months to a year, some feel they want to continue to work on their goals more long-term.

Sometimes your needs may change and you may need to shift from work with me to a different kind of support, like with a grief doula or a different type of therapy I don’t specialize in. There’s no specific answer, but we can check in about this as we go if you’d like.

This usually depends on your unique needs and goals for our work. Starting off, I try to see people weekly or every other week to strengthen our therapeutic relationship.

If you would like to meet with me in a more flexible frequency, I’m happy to talk about this in our initial consult.

I choose to refrain from diagnosing clients. I prefer to get to know each client, work with them to make sense of their unique symptoms & see where we need to focus our sessions to help alleviate stressors.

At times, I may discuss your view of diagnosis or potential diagnostic labels with you in order to provide you with resources or referrals.

I work with folks throughout California virtually and am in the process of finding the ideal office space to meet in-person in San Diego.