Frequently Asked Questions

GETTING STARTED

  • Book a 15-minute phone consultation. If we're a good fit, I'll email your consent forms and check your insurance benefits. Once your paperwork is back, you'll get a link for your first session.

  • You tell me what's bringing you here, in as much or as little detail as you want. I tell you how I work and whether I think I'm the right person for it. We cover scheduling, insurance and rates.

    If it isn't a fit, I'll say so and point you toward someone better suited. No cost, no pressure either way.

  • Everything starts with the consultation call, which you can book directly from this site. Ongoing sessions get scheduled between us once we've begun. I'll usually hold a recurring slot for you.

  • Less excavation than you might be bracing for. Mostly your history, what you want to be different, and finding your pace together. We won't go anywhere your nervous system hasn't agreed to go.

  • There's no threshold of suffering you have to cross first. If something keeps happening and you can't shift it on your own, that's reason enough. The call costs you fifteen minutes and tells you a lot.

  • You'll get a decent sense on the call and a much better one after two or three sessions. Fit matters more than technique, in the research and in my experience, so if it isn't there, say so. I won't take it personally, and I'll help you find someone else.

  • Then you're in the majority. Most people arrive knowing something needs to change and not much else. Working that out is what the consultation is for.

HOW I WORK

  • Trauma-informed care as the frame, with Internal Family Systems, somatic and nervous-system work, EMDR and cognitive behavioral therapy inside it. Which ones we lean on depends entirely on you.

  • A structured approach for memories that still land in the present tense. It uses bilateral stimulation, eye movements, tapping or sound, while you hold the memory in mind, which appears to let the brain finish processing something it never finished. The memory stays. Its grip loosens.

    We don't start here. First we build resourcing and regulation, so that when we open something you have somewhere to stand.

  • A way of understanding your inner life as made up of parts: the critic, the planner, the one who shuts down before anyone else can. Each developed for a reason, usually a good one at the time.

    Instead of fighting them, we get curious about what they're protecting. The internal argument tends to quiet down once each side feels heard.

  • Therapy that treats the body as a source of information rather than a passenger. We track sensation, breath and nervous-system states, and build your capacity to stay present with a feeling without flooding or going numb.

  • Often, yes, and usually because the stuckness isn't cognitive. If you can explain your patterns with total accuracy and still can't shift them, that's a sign the material lives somewhere talking alone doesn't reach.

  • Yes. Both single-event trauma and the slower kind that comes from long exposure to environments that weren't safe enough.

  • Yes, these are among the most common reasons people come to me, often alongside a life transition or a relationship that keeps hitting the same wall.

  • Yes, and a good deal of my group and retreat work is built around exactly this.

  • People who are thoughtful and reflective, who suspect their patterns mean something, and who are open to being helped by more than conversation, even if they've never tried anything like it. There's more on this, including who I'd point elsewhere, on the about page.

  • Yes, both as a client and through clinical consultation. Carrying other people's material for a living has a cost, and it deserves somewhere to be put down.

  • I offer clinical consultation for therapists integrating somatic, IFS or breath-based work into their practice, individually or in small groups.

INTENSIVE SESSIONS

  • Extended sessions of 90, 120 or 150 minutes instead of the standard fifty, enough room to open something, work with it, and land properly, all in one sitting. The fifty-minute hour is an insurance artifact, not a clinical truth.

  • If your weekly hour keeps ending just as something opens. If you're working through a specific event. If a consistent weekly rhythm isn't realistic for your schedule, travel or capacity.

    It's probably not the place to start if you're in acute crisis, or if we haven't yet built enough of a container between us. We'd talk that through honestly before booking.

  • Most people want a quiet evening and a light next day. We'll plan a follow-up so nothing is left hanging.

  • Yes, for clients located in Florida.

BREATHWORK

  • Guided, active breathing, roughly an hour, set to music, held from start to finish, used to reach material that talking hasn't moved. There's a fuller description, and a small guided sample you can try, on the breathwork page.

  • Different every time, including for the same person. Heat, tingling, shaking, tears, laughter, an old memory, or a stillness you haven't felt in years. Sometimes not much at all, which is information too.

    Nothing is required of you except to keep breathing and let me look after the rest.

  • No. Most people arrive having never done it, and nothing needs preparing beforehand.

  • Yes, as a standalone session, or alongside our therapy work when we've reached the edge of what words are doing.

  • Yes, seasonally and in small groups, sometimes outdoors. No one has to share anything at the end.

  • Therapy works largely through language and understanding. Breathwork bypasses language almost entirely. They do different jobs, which is exactly why they work well together.

  • Yes, and many of my clients use it that way, usually when something is clearly held in the body and won't come forward any other way.

  • It's physically active, so tell me first if you're pregnant, or living with a cardiovascular condition, epilepsy, glaucoma, or a history of psychosis or bipolar disorder. None of these is automatically a no, but in some cases I'll ask you to check with your doctor. The full list is on the breathwork page.

COST AND LOGISTICS

  • Standard sessions are 50 minutes. Intensives run 90, 120 or 150.

  • Usually weekly to begin with, sometimes every other week as things settle. We'll keep checking whether the rhythm still fits.

  • Not for therapy. I'm licensed in Florida, so you need to be physically in the state at the time of session. Clinical consultation for other clinicians isn't restricted this way.

  • Insurances and programs

    • Aetna

    • AllSavers UHC

    • Allied Benefit Systems - Aetna

    • Allied Benefit Systems - Cigna

    • Centivo

    • Confide Enhanced EAP

    • EVHC - Aetna

    • EVHC - Cigna

    • Government Employees Health Association

    • Luminare Health - Cigna

    • Meritain

    • NYC Employees PPO Plan

    • Nippon

    • Optum

    • Optum Emotional Wellbeing Solutions (EWS) - Core EAP

    • Optum Emotional Wellbeing Solutions (EWS) - Premium EAP

    • Oscar

    • Oxford Health Plans

    • Surest (Formerly Bind)

    • UHC Student Resources

    • UMR

    • United Healthcare Shared Services

    • UnitedHealthcare

    • UnitedHealthcare Global

    Bring your details to the consultation and I'll verify your coverage before you commit to anything. Breathwork journeys are generally not a billable service, so those are private pay.

  • $140-200 per session

  • Please provide at least 48 hours notice for any cancellations or rescheduling.

  • Yes, with the narrow legal exceptions every therapist has: risk of serious harm to yourself or someone else, or abuse of a child or vulnerable adult. Your intake paperwork spells these out in full before we begin, and I'm happy to walk through them on the call.