What is therapy with me like?

I meet you with an open heart and an open mind. I do my best to create a space for you to unleash your inner world with no judgment. We observe your process together. You are the guide, the engine, the caboose on your train. You’re actually the whole train! I am just someone there on one of your carts to help you clean out the luggage that no longer belongs. 

We establish a plan together. I provide many tools to support you in feeling more grounded in your body, life and in envisioning a future worth living beyond your past or present day distress.

My intention with someone is to support them in restoring balance within and outside of distress. While I founded Transforward to create a gender-affirming space for people across a gender spectrum, I support men, women and transgender people from all walks of life. My heart rest in supporting people on their healing journey and live a healthier life outside of trauma.

I support people using EMDR therapy, somatic practices and embodiment techniques that I have found to be very powerful interventions throughout my career. I believe and have come to understand the wisdom of the body to heal, even beyond the most painful experiences or a previous diagnosis.

Areas of specialization include:

  • Whole sense of self development, identity exploration and self-esteem empowerment

  • LGBT+ experiences, including sexual trauma related to homophobia

  • Gender issues and trauma related to patriarchy, misogyny, sexism, transphobia

  • Complex histories related to childhood abuse/neglect, abandonment, betrayal

  • Dissociation, mild to chronic

  • Sexual abuse, assault or harassment histories

  • Oppressive experiences related to social-cultural trauma and abusive experiences

  • Intuition enhancement and awareness, including creativity and life purpose

I always do my best to provide other resources and referrals relevant to your care when necessary.

Are you a young person/minor or a family seeking support? Read more about other services I offer here. At the bottom or the services page you can find insurance and payment information.

Have some questions? Don’t hesitate to reach out to me. I can get a better sense of what you are going through and provide my insights through a consultation call. We can schedule an initial session to see if working together would be a good fit. 

Testimonials

“The hardest choice is the one to get help, especially when you feel undeserving of it, but it’s the gentlest one you can make for yourself.”

“As a trans man, disconnection from my body is not something I’m unfamiliar with, but that extends outside of gender dysphoria and into the way that I experience emotion. Learning to locate my feelings in my body and identify the connection between my physical and mental wellbeing brought me a more consonant sense of self. After reprocessing a lot of guilt and shame, I stopped seeing my trans-ness as a burden to carry and began seeing it as something that just is. I can even appreciate the unique perspective it gives me and the resilience and introspectiveness that it’s led me to develop. My time in therapy gave me the tools that allow me to live my life day to day without ruminating about my identity or how it makes me lesser. I can just exist, be trans, and not have those two things equal suffering. Having the space to think about anything besides the dissonance in my identity made a world of difference in my quality of life.”

“While mending my relationship to myself, I was shook how much of the pain I carried about my trans experience wasn’t even mine…As I was processing my memories with Stefan, I started to feel how much the dread puppets my posture and pinches the right side of my face. I started to notice that I wasn’t even really meditating. I had practiced on my own for years in an effort to ease anxiety but I was actually just disassociating on purpose. I think in the beginning I even laid claim to feeling no shame at all. I was just sure my transition was a need, but it felt so out of reach when I came out and I couldn’t seem to explain myself to the people around me. I actually still can’t, but I don’t feel responsible to do so anymore. EMDR helped me logically break the tether between my identity and those around me. This ended my ‘stuck in the past’ mindset because I wasn’t sending every free braincell on a search for evidence about who I was anymore.”