A doctor who understands the tension of becoming yourself.

WHO I AM

There is a difference between building a life and constantly proving you deserve it.

Becoming yourself is rarely a quiet, seamless process. It happens in childhood, adolescence, emerging adulthood, and every transition that follows—and it rarely looks the same from one person to the next. That process can be especially complicated when your identity has always been built on being capable, driven, and successful. My own path has been defined by that same ambition. I’ve always cared deeply about learning, doing things well, and building a meaningful life. Becoming a doctor of clinical psychology required years of rigorous training in high-intensity environments, learning to sit with complexity, diagnostic precision, and the parts of being human that don’t have simple answers.

At the same time, I have spent years stepping into my own adulthood across Arizona. From spending much of my life in the Valley to planting my own roots in Flagstaff, the mountain town my family has called home for generations, it has meant building a career, navigating modern relationships, and figuring out which parts of the life I’m creating actually reflect who I am.

One of the most valuable truths I’ve learned along the way is that there is a massive difference between building a life and constantly proving that you deserve the one you have.

Who I work with

Most of my clients come to me after realizing they’ve spent months or years trying to think their way out of a pattern. On paper, everything looks like it's going well. But internally, you’re operating on a quiet, exhausting rule: Because I can handle everything, I should. Your definition of “good enough” has stayed stubbornly anchored at 100%.

I work with ambitious young women, high-achieving adults, and those navigating the complicated transition between who they have been and who they are becoming. That may mean career burnout, anxiety and perfectionism, relationship patterns, identity shifts, or learning how to build a life that feels like yours rather than one that simply looks successful from the outside.

I also work with children and adolescents, where the same philosophy applies: the visible problem is not always the whole problem. Sometimes the problem looks like a child who is anxious, melting down, avoiding school, or working twice as hard to keep up. Sometimes it looks like a teenager who is overwhelmed, shutting down, struggling with identity, or caught in patterns they do not yet have the language to describe. My approach looks beyond the behavior in order to understand the whole person: their strengths, development, relationships, and what is driving what we see on the surface.

Across ages and circumstances, my work starts in the same place—understanding what is actually driving the pattern so we can change it, not simply become better at managing it. Whether the challenge belongs to you, your child, your relationship, or your family, the goal is meaningful change that lasts.

I work with people who want to:

• Understand the patterns beneath the problem: Look beyond symptoms, behaviors, or conflict to understand what is actually driving them.
• Break the intellectualization trap: Stop talking around feelings and learn how to recognize, tolerate, and process what is happening beneath the surface.
• Navigate identity and development: Move through transitions, from childhood and adolescence to emerging adulthood, career, partnership, and parenthood, without losing yourself in the process.
• Change patterns, not just manage them: Develop a clearer understanding of yourself and your relationships so change can extend beyond the therapy room.

Looking at the entire architecture of your life

I don’t believe meaningful change comes from simply managing surface symptoms. Whether I am working with an adult trying to understand a long-standing pattern, a teenager figuring out who they are, or a child whose behavior is communicating something they do not yet have words for, I want to understand the whole picture.

With children and teens, that means looking beyond the behavior, grades, or presenting concern to understand the whole individual, including their strengths, development, relationships, environments, and what they may be communicating through the problem. With adults, it means understanding the patterns that have shaped how you think, relate, perform, and move through the world. With couples and families, it means looking at the patterns between people, not simply locating the problem within one person.

I use Therapeutic Assessment: a collaborative approach to psychological assessment that combines the rigor of psychological testing with the depth of psychotherapy. We untangle your psychology, attachment patterns, and behavioral loops with exactness to create a roadmap for lasting change.

My view on growth is simple: my role isn’t to control your outcomes, prescribe your path, or “fix” you; it’s to act as a guide for your own autonomy. Living authentically isn’t accomplished by having someone dictate your life or give you the answers. True agency is built through having real choices, trusting your instincts, and being allowed to experience your life directly.

What working with me feels like

Working with me feels less like traditional “doctor-patient” therapy and more like an intense, highly collaborative partnership with a clinical expert who gets it.

Here’s what you can expect in our work together:

• Warm accountability: I am in your corner, which means I will gently and directly call out the contradictions, avoidance, and self-defeating patterns you might not have uncovered yet. I won’t let you hide behind your intellect.
• No platitudes: We talk like real human beings, with humor, raw honesty, and straightforward language.
• Precision and depth: I bring an evaluator’s eye to every session. We don’t guess what’s wrong; we carefully map out your psychology, attachment patterns, and behavioral loops until the picture is crystal clear.
• Experiential and metaphor-driven work: Insight is a left-brain exercise, but deep change happens when your logic aligns with your actual felt experience. We can bridge the gap to help you internalize truths, not just analyze them.

We will figure out what’s keeping you stuck, unpack why you operate the way you do, and build a life that feels as grounded on the inside as it looks on the outside. The goal isn’t to become less ambitious, less driven, or less invested in the people you love. The goal is to become more fully yourself: to know what you want, tolerate the discomfort of getting things wrong, and build a life that isn’t just impressive from the outside, but feels like yours from the inside.