Frequently Asked Questions

I’m based in Spokane, and I work virtually with women across Washington State.

Wherever you go, my office comes with you.

It’s probably easier than you think. We’ll meet on a secure video platform that meets HIPAA requirements, so you can have your session anywhere you have some quiet and privacy.

Before your first appointment, I’ll send you everything you need, including your intake paperwork and a link to join. At your scheduled time, you click the link, and we’re face-to-face on your computer, tablet, or phone.

Clients tell me how quickly it starts to feel normal. Within a few minutes, the technology fades and what’s left is the conversation.

Bring your favorite blanket, your dog, and a cup of coffee. And don’t worry about the tech. If you’ve ever joined a Zoom meeting, you’re already overqualified.

First, take a deep breath.

Reaching out is the hardest part of the whole process. If you’ve been putting it off, you’re in good company. Plenty of my clients thought about calling a therapist for months before they did.

When you’re ready, reach out through my contact form, by email, or by phone. We’ll set up an initial consultation where you can ask questions, tell me what’s bringing you in, and get a sense of whether we’re right for each other.

If we decide to move forward, we’ll get your first session on the calendar.

From there, we begin where you are. You don’t need the right words or a story you’ve already organized, just a willingness to take the first step.

It’s a brief conversation before we ever schedule a session. You can ask me questions, tell me a little about what’s bringing you to therapy, and hear how I work.

Then you decide whether I’m a good fit for you. There’s no pressure and no expectation that you’ll have it all sorted out before we talk.

Most sessions run 50 to 55 minutes. That doesn’t sound like much time, but you’d be surprised how much happens in a focused hour.

I keep an eye on the clock so you don’t have to.

Some sessions are full of insight and “aha” moments. Others are quieter and give you room to slow down or take a deep breath in the middle of a busy life.

One hour. One conversation. One step at a time.

For most clients, I recommend once a week, especially at the beginning.

Weekly sessions keep momentum, build trust, and mean we’re not spending each session trying to remember where we left off.

As you make progress and start feeling steadier day to day, we’ll talk about moving to every other week or less. My aim is to help you reach a place where you don’t need me in the same way.

The honest answer is that it depends.

Some people come for a short season to work through a specific challenge or life transition. Others stay longer as they heal deeper patterns and change the way they relate to themselves.

Rather than counting sessions, I pay attention to whether you’re making progress toward what matters most to you. We’ll check in regularly and decide together what the right next step looks like.

My hope is never to keep you in therapy longer than you need. When you trust yourself more and are living in a way that feels like yours, we’ll talk about what a healthy ending looks like.

And if life brings something new down the road, you’re always welcome back.

I’m a private-pay practice and not in network with insurance companies.

If your plan includes out-of-network benefits, I’m happy to provide a superbill (a detailed receipt) you can submit for possible reimbursement. I can’t guarantee what your insurance will cover, and plenty of clients are pleasantly surprised by how much they get back.

If you’re not sure whether your plan has out-of-network benefits, a quick call to your insurance company will tell you exactly what your coverage looks like.

Insurance can feel like learning a new language. I’ll make the paperwork part as straightforward as I can.

Life happens, and I completely understand.

If you’re sick, your child wakes up with a fever, or your car won’t start, let me know as soon as you can.

Your appointment time is reserved just for you, so I ask for at least 24 hours’ notice when you need to cancel or reschedule. That gives me the chance to offer the time to someone else who’s waiting for one.

Same-day cancellations and missed appointments are generally subject to my cancellation policy, which we’ll review together before we begin. The point is to protect the time we’ve set aside for your care.

My practice is built for women, especially those who’ve spent years caring for everyone else and slowly lost connection with themselves. If you’ve caught yourself wondering, “When did I stop feeling like me?” or “How did I become the last person on my own list?” you’re exactly who I created this practice for.

Many of my clients are in midlife, though your age matters far less to me than whether my approach feels right for you. Women in their 20s, their 60s, and everywhere in between arrive asking the same questions.

Who am I now? Is it too late to make changes?

That said, healing isn’t exclusive to women. If you’re a man or an emerging adult who connects with my approach and the message on this website, I’d be happy to schedule a consultation.

I don’t provide couples therapy or work with adolescents. I’ve worked extensively with teens, and my private practice is dedicated to adults so I can give my full attention to the women I care most about helping.

I work with women who are ready to reconnect with themselves.

Many come to me with anxiety, depression, chronic stress, burnout, or the effects of trauma. Others are moving through a major life transition, relationship trouble, grief, or a growing distance from the person they used to be.

Some of what I hear most often:

• Second-guessing yourself and struggling to trust your own decisions
• Putting everyone else first and feeling exhausted by it
• Living with the lingering effects of difficult or traumatic experiences
• Perfectionism, people-pleasing, and a harsh inner critic
• Wondering who you are now, after years of caring for everyone else

You don’t have to fit neatly into a diagnosis to benefit from therapy, and you don’t have to wait until you’re falling apart. Sometimes the right time to begin is when a quiet voice inside you says, “Something needs to change.”

At the heart of my work is a simple belief:

I don’t think you’ve lost yourself. I think you’ve lost trust in yourself.

Many women arrive believing something is fundamentally wrong with them. They’ve spent years criticizing themselves, second-guessing every decision, and wondering why they can’t just “get it together.”

Instead of asking, “What’s wrong with you?” I ask, “What happened to you, and how did your mind and nervous system learn to protect you?”

Most of the patterns that frustrate you today once made perfect sense. We’ll work to understand them with curiosity instead of judgment.

I combine evidence-based therapy with practical tools, nervous system education, and mindfulness so you understand yourself, and not only your symptoms.

The aim is to help you rebuild trust in yourself, so you can decide with more confidence, set healthier boundaries, and build a life that feels like yours.

The first session is about getting to know each other. You don’t need to prepare a speech or worry about saying the right thing.

I’ll ask questions to understand what’s bringing you in, what you’ve been carrying, and what you hope will be different. You’ll have plenty of time to ask me questions, too, and to decide whether I’m the right therapist for you.

Meeting a therapist for the first time feels vulnerable. My goal is to give you a place where you can exhale and tell your story at whatever pace is comfortable.

Some people leave that first session lighter, because they finally said out loud something they’d been carrying alone. Others leave with more questions than answers, and that’s fine, too.

One more thing. If you’re worried about crying, not crying, rambling, forgetting what you wanted to say, or feeling nervous, welcome to being human. All of it happens in therapy, and all of it is perfectly okay.

No two sessions are exactly alike, because no two weeks in your life are exactly alike.

Some days, we’ll untangle something that’s been weighing on you. Other days, we’ll celebrate progress, look at a recurring pattern, practice a new skill, or make room for emotions you’ve been holding by yourself for far too long.

I ask a lot of thoughtful questions, because many of the answers you’re looking for are already in you, buried under years of self-doubt, people-pleasing, fear, and hard experience.

You’ll leave with practical tools, too. Depending on your goals, those look like ways to manage anxiety, regulate your nervous system, set healthier boundaries, quiet your inner critic, or make decisions from your values.

We’ll also make room for curiosity, insight, laughter, and the occasional box of tissues. (For the record, there’s no prize for making it through therapy without crying, and absolutely no requirement that you cry either.)

Above all, I want therapy to be the one place in your week where you don’t have to pretend, perform, or hold anything together for anyone. You get to show up exactly as you are.

Then you’re in exactly the right place. Many of the people I work with are coming to therapy for the first time.

Feeling nervous is completely normal, and so is wondering whether you’re “doing therapy right.” (Spoiler: there isn’t a right way.)

Some people arrive able to name exactly what’s wrong. Others simply know that something doesn’t feel right anymore. Both work.

Think of our first few sessions as a conversation rather than an interrogation. I’ll guide the process so you’re never left wondering what comes next.

If you feel awkward in that first session, there’s a good chance I know exactly how you’re feeling, because almost everyone does. It doesn’t take long before the awkwardness fades, and it starts to feel like two people having an honest conversation.

Not unless and until you’re ready.

Your past explains a lot about why you think, feel, and respond the way you do today. Therapy still doesn’t require you to hand over painful memories before you’ve built enough trust to do it.

We’ll start with what matters most to you right now: a current challenge, a relationship, anxiety, burnout, or a growing sense of distance from yourself.

As we work, we’ll notice patterns with roots in earlier experiences. If exploring them would help, we’ll do it thoughtfully and at a pace that feels right to you.

You’re always in the driver’s seat. We’ll decide together where to go and when.

Sometimes, though probably not the kind you’re imagining.

Busywork assigned just so you have homework isn’t useful to anyone. If I suggest something between sessions, it’s because it will genuinely support what we’re working on.

That looks like noticing a recurring thought pattern, practicing a mindfulness exercise, trying a new boundary, journaling about a question we explored, or pausing to check in with yourself during the week.

These aren’t tests, and there are no grades. If something doesn’t get done, we’ll get curious about what got in the way, and that conversation is as valuable as the exercise itself.

The goal is greater awareness, more self-trust, and real confidence in your everyday life.

Healing doesn’t mean you’ll never feel anxious, sad, or overwhelmed again; it doesn’t mean life suddenly gets easy.

To me, it looks like trusting yourself a little more than you did yesterday. Setting a boundary without apologizing for having needs. Hearing your inner critic and answering it with compassion instead of shame.

Most of the time, it’s quiet. It’s recovering from a hard day faster than you used to, speaking up where you’d normally have stayed silent, choosing rest over guilt.

Those small moments add up. One day you look back and realize that you’re no longer living on autopilot and that you feel at home in your own life.

I’m a Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker (LICSW) in Washington State, with a Master of Social Work from Eastern Washington University.

Social work appealed to me because it looks past symptoms and diagnoses to the whole person: relationships, experiences, environment, strengths, and capacity for growth.

Before private practice, I spent several years in community behavioral health, supporting individuals and families through some of the hardest things life hands people. That work taught me to meet people where they are and to recognize what someone is capable of before they can see it themselves.

Today my work is informed by evidence-based approaches, neuroscience, and ongoing training in trauma, nervous system regulation, mindfulness, and cognitive and behavioral therapy. One of my favorite parts of this job is that I never stop being a student.

One of the great things about telehealth is that you get to pick the setting. Choose a comfy spot.

Therapy is hard work. Set yourself up for success by setting yourself down somewhere private and peaceful.

Of course. Ask me anything.

I won’t always give you a direct answer.

You ask a question because you need something, and I want to connect with what you genuinely want and need. Exploring the question itself is far more valuable than getting an answer.

Sometimes, I’ll turn it around and ask you about your curiosity. What does it mean to you to ask me this particular question, and what would it mean for me to answer it?

I’ve always been fascinated by people. What shapes us, what hurts us, and, most of all, what helps us heal.

My own life taught me that healing is possible. I know what it feels like to struggle, to question myself, and to wonder whether life could ever feel different.

That curiosity led me to study psychology, neuroscience, trauma, mindfulness, and evidence-based therapy, because I wanted to understand what helps people rebuild trust in themselves.

Watching a woman start to see herself with more compassion, discover strengths she didn’t know she had, and reconnect with who she truly is, is one of the great honors of my work.

People are far more resilient than they realize.

Definitely tea, with one very specific exception.

I don’t drink coffee, which surprises a lot of people. If I’m treating myself, you’ll almost always find me with a London Fog. It’s basically comfort in a mug.

Once the weather turns cold, though, I’m not saying no to homemade hot chocolate, made with real melted chocolate and cream and almost decadent enough to count as dessert.

Whether it’s a cozy cup of tea, a walk outside, or curling up with a good book, I’ve learned that taking care of yourself happens in the small moments when you slow down.