About Me

Services Provided Individual, couples and family therapy.

Specialty Areas

Eating Disorders, Depression and Anxiety Disorders as well as relationship problems,
and struggles with developmental transitions such as school, marriage, children, job change, empty nesting, and retirement.

We will work together to find the best treatment program for you. How long therapy lasts and how often we meet are determined by many factors including: your preferences; the severity of your symptoms; how long they have bothered you; how motivated you are to change them right now; and, how other facets of your life are going. A typical recommendation would be that we meet weekly for several months in order to facilitate rapid improvement in your symptoms and so that we can establish a strong therapeutic alliance.

Philosophy

My goal is to help you improve the quality of your life. Life is complex – filled with needed, but difficult relationships, unwanted and poorly understood emotions, and challenging situations. The coping strategies that people develop to negotiate this rocky terrain are not always helpful. Once they are in place, however, they can be very difficult to change. Our work will be to identify what thoughts, feelings, behaviors and/or relationships are problematic for you and develop different perspectives and coping strategies for them. To do this, I am likely to use techniques from many types of therapy.

I typically start within a cognitive-behavioral framework, but will incorporate additional modalities as needed. It is a very collaborative approach, which emphasizes you as the expert of your life, experiences, and emotions.

Training

I have extensive training in empirically supported treatments for eating disorders, depression and anxiety disorders. I have been a primary therapist on four federally funded national treatment outcome studies. I received my doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Minnesota in 2000. As part of my training, I completed predoctoral and postdoctoral fellowships at Hennepin County Medical Center. From 2000-2004, I was a research associate at the University of Minnesota Eating Disorders Research Program. My undergraduate degree is from Vanderbilt University where I majored in Economics and Psychology.

Collaboration With Other Providers

An advantage of seeing an independent psychologist is that you can maintain your current treatment team or if you need additional services, I will make a referral after I better understand your unique needs. I regularly collaborate with primary care physicians, psychiatrists, group therapy leaders, and dieticians. If there is a provider whom you would like me to contact, please sign a Release of Information form found in the forms section.