Substance use, commonly referred to as addiction or substance use disorders, shows up in my work constantly. In couples, in individuals, in family histories where substance use shaped everything that came after. It's one of the areas I'm most deeply trained in, and one of the areas where I think the right therapist makes the biggest difference.
My background in substance use is clinical and specialized. I have worked as a substance use psychologist at the Veterans Health Administration, in residential substance use treatment, outpatient programs, and university counseling centers. I completed my predoctoral internship at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Counseling Center, where I specialized in substance use counseling with college aged adults, and served as the Substance Use Support Team Director at the University of Texas at Austin. I am certified in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Substance Use Disorders and Motivational Interviewing, and I regularly present on substance use topics for other clinicians.
My approach
I work from a harm reduction philosophy. That means my goal isn't to tell you that you need to quit. It's to explore with you how your use might be causing harm to yourself, your relationships, and your life, and what you actually want to do about that. Sometimes that leads to abstinence. Sometimes it doesn't. That's something we figure out together.
I work with people across the spectrum. People who are questioning whether their use is actually a problem. People who are functioning but feel it starting to catch up with them. People whose partner's drinking is affecting the relationship and nobody's talking about it directly. People who grew up around chaotic substance use and are still feeling the effects.
If you've avoided reaching out because you're worried about being told what to do or judged for not being ready to quit, that's exactly the conversation I'm here for.
SUBSTANCE USE
OTHER SPECIALTIES
Trauma and Relationship Patterns
Most of the people I work with didn't grow up with a healthy model of what relationships are supposed to look like. What they learned instead about love, conflict, safety, and connection shows up in their adult relationships in ways that are often hard to see from the inside. I help people understand where those patterns came from and how to actually change them, not just understand them.
Domestic Violence Recovery and Unhealthy Relationship Histories
Recovering from a toxic or abusive relationship is its own kind of work. Sometimes even figuring out if it was abusive, just unhealthy, or something else all together is even more unique work. These experiences can affect how you see yourself, how you trust, and what you expect from relationships going forward. I work with individuals navigating that recovery and relationships where one or both partners experienced abuse in past relationships. Treatment can include making sense of what happened, rebuilding a sense of self, identifying the impact, and figuring out how to move forward.
Anger and Conflict
Anger in relationships is almost never just about what it looks like on the surface. Whether it's explosive or quiet and simmering, it's usually protecting something. A fear, a need, an old wound that never got addressed. I work with couples and individuals to understand what's underneath the anger and how to actually change the pattern, not just manage it. While I help you build empathy for the toll anger can take on your life, I also hold you compassionately accountable for how your lash outs and passive aggressiveness impacts others.
Chaotic Family Backgrounds
Growing up in a home that was unpredictable, emotionally overwhelming,or just quietly hard and shows up in adult life in ways people don't always connect back to where it came from. I work with people who are starting to make those connections and who want to stop organizing their lives around coping strategies that made sense once but aren't working anymore.
A note on identity and social justice in our work:
My approach is explicitly social justice oriented. That means I actively attend to how racism, heterosexism, colorism, ableism, and other forms of oppression shape people's lives, relationships, and experiences in therapy. It also means people’s cultural values and strengths are incorporated into our work, not pushed aside.
If you've been in therapy before and felt like you had to educate your therapist about your identity, or like the most important parts of who you are got glossed over or ignored, that won't happen here. Your identity is not something we work around. It's part of how I understand you and your relationships from the beginning.
I work with intercultural and interracial couples, queer and trans individuals and couples, people of all relationship structures, and people navigating complex identity experiences. If you're worried about finding a therapist where you'll actually feel seen, this is that place.
The way this dedication manifests itself in my specialities is in my work with individuals on sorting through oppressive messaging they may have internalized during painful experiences. I also work with couples on rebuilding more egalitarian relationships, whether that is having more shared responsibility in the home, navigating power dynamics related to identities, or undoing painful messaging inherited from society and/or family.
