Thank you for your interest in learning more about me and my practice!
I am a licensed marriage and family therapist practicing in Washington, DC and McLean, VA. I hold a Master’s Degree in Marriage and Family Therapy and have completed Doctorate-level coursework in Marriage and Family Therapy.
I am a Clinical Member of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT), and a member of both the Middle Atlantic Division of the AAMFT and the Virginia Association for Marriage and Family Therapy.
Further, I am a Certified Prepare/Enrich Counselor, a program designed with an assessment to help couples prepare for marriage and/or improve their relationships.
I also volunteer as a Provider for Give an Hour, a non-profit organization providing free mental health services to U.S. troops and their families.
Thoughts on Therapy
I have provided therapy to individuals, couples, and families for more than five years. I specialize in premarital and newly married couples and families; however, my work focuses largely on working with couples and families to enrich their relationships at all stages of life. My job is to help people to live the life they want to lead.
In my experience in working with couples and relationships, I often hear “Maybe we are just not right for each other. I think we are just not meant to be.” I often invite these couples and individuals to consider that what if we just never learned how to create and sustain happy, healthy long-term relationships? Relationships, the long and healthy ones, can be complicated and difficult to create and sustain, so how can we be expected to know what we are doing when we were never taught the specifics on what to do and how to do it? Sure, we see examples from our parents, caregivers, our own past relationships, the media, but maybe that’s not enough. Marriages and relationships of all kinds (including parent-child ones) have perks or benefits, yet not without responsibilities.
Certainly there are some relationships in which the partners are not right for each other and cannot make it work and that is okay. I am not suggesting that we cannot or should not be responsible for the problems in our relationships simply because we have not learned the skills required for relationships to work. Rather, I am suggesting that we work to take responsibility for our contributions to the problems in our relationships and be open to learning the skills to have a successful, happy relationship.