My Training

After completing a BA in Philosophy at UCLA and working as the research director of a FDA study in the field of women's health, I continued my studies with a Master's degree in Educational Psychology at Texas A&M University. While there, I worked as a research assistant with "at risk" adolescents in the area of Attribution Theory, which has to do with understanding how we make sense of the things that happen to us and the resulting effect on self-esteem and functioning. This may have been an early sign of my interest in meaning and meaning making. Upon completion of my Master's in 1988, I worked at a Women's Shelter in Austin, Texas doing 4-8 groups a week at an Outreach Center. There I was instrumental in developing an in-school, city-wide program for girls and young women in abusive dating relationships, a program that has grown exponentially and is now called, "Expect 

Respect". During the years of working in private practice, I counselled in an in-patient unit for those suffering from severe eating disorders, a community clinic and with an agency focused on the prevention of child abuse. In the early '90's, I also completed a two-year training in a mindfulness-based, somatic (or body-centered) approach to psychotherapy called, "Hakomi". I was certified as a Hakomi Therapist and assisted in various trainings for the years following. In 2014, I completed my studies to become a Jungian Psychoanalyst, a diploma that required a 5-year, full-time, post-graduate training at ISAPZurich (International School of Analytical Psychology, Zurich, Switzerland). This program was extremely rigorous, not only due to the client hours, coursework, supervision, as well as oral and written exams required, but due to the 300 hours of personal psychoanalysis that each of us 

candidates was required to undergo for our own self-awareness and what C.G Jung termed, "individuation" process. I  have most recently begun studying and training in a form of biofeedback, called "neurofeedback". a computer-assisted form of exercise/ training for the central nervous system. I was motivated to begin this study due to my awareness that in many cases of early trauma, a terrified and unstable nervous system is often unable to make full use of the therapeutic alliance or of "talk therapy".  Patterns of fight/flight/freeze are stored in a part of the brain that is not reached by logic, reason or even comforting words. This technique has a wide-range of applications including for those with symptoms of  anxiety, depression, migraines, insomnia, body-tension, chronic pain and many other symptoms that are common after-effects of extreme stress and/or trauma.