FAQ

What do you even do?

I provide talk therapy for individuals and couples. My specialty is helping queer folks with sex and relationship challenges.

I also provide ketamine-assisted therapy for individuals. I do that work as part of a care team at Doorway Therapeutics.

I’m an associate marriage and family therapist & associate professional clinical counselor. That means I’ve completed an advanced degree and traineeship, and I’m accumulating experience toward two licenses (MFT & PCC). That also means I’m employed and directly supervised by a licensed clinician, John Wiskind.

I work with everyone, but I specialize in working with queer folks of all stripes of the LGBTQ+ community, especially people of color. That includes trans folks, kinksters, nonmonogamous folks, and gender-diverse people, as well as their loved ones. It’s tough to find therapy provided by the community for the community, and I’m trying to be the therapist I want to see in the world.

Okay… what the cuss is sex therapy?

Sex therapy is talk therapy like any other. There’s no touching.

So: I talk to people! About sex, relationships, gender identity, and the stress of being different. We tackle hangups, concerns, troubleshooting, and areas of growth.

I concentrate on concerns around gender, sexuality, and relationships, and have a little more education in that arena. It can be anything from gender dysphoria to interpersonal communication to accommodating mobility challenges.

Therapy can be short-term or long-term, solution-focused or exploratory, as you prefer. My goal is to concentrate on what matters to you, and give you the tools to keep being awesome once our work is done.

Do you only do sex therapy?

Nope! I talk to people about all sorts of things. However, I often find folks have a hard time finding therapists who treat their sexuality as a normal extension of their life and struggles, so that’s my niche. Most of my clients come in for one concern, and then notice that it connects to lots of other important parts of their life.

That being said, my priority is to provide people with the best care. If I honestly believe I’m not qualified to help you, I will provide you with a referral to someone else.

I don’t know if I should be here…

Hey, that’s okay. You don’t have to have it all figured out. 

Maybe you’re feeling discouraged about how your relationships or sex life is going, or you’re not sure if what’s happening to you is normal. Maybe you grew up in a space that didn’t give you the tools you needed to understand yourself, and now you’re looking for them. Maybe you’re wondering if your concern is serious enough to deserve help.

Many of us never get a chance to be curious about ourselves, to learn the basics and ask questions in a safe place. And then, when life isn’t seamless, we’re shamed or blamed for it. If you’re here feeling a little unsure and nervous, you’re not alone. Go ahead and take a look around, and if you think you’d like to work with me, we can talk.

What’s with the island theme?

Well, I’m an island person! I grew up on an island just 35x100 miles across. It’s important to me to help people relate genuinely to their sexuality, as whole people, so I try to be genuine in how I show up as a therapist.

Sexuality is often shrouded in secrecy and taboo, even while we’re fed caricatures of sex in media. And depictions of sex are often limited to one specific view: leather, velvet, red roses, and candles. We learn early on what the “right” ways to be sexy or relate to sexuality are, and we’re told anything outside of that is either weird, or pathological.

But that is only one possible perspective.

Sexuality can be the site of deep struggle for people, but it can also be a space for play, variety, transformation, and self-expression. Sexuality can be a spiritual practice, a comfort, a hobby, or a multiplayer game. I see it as my job to not just help people overcome challenges in their sexual lives, but to foster joy.

On an island, you quickly notice how a small change in your location gives you a totally different view of the world. It can reveal new knowledge of a problem, depth where you thought there was only shallow area. Sometimes all you need is to approach a problem from a different viewpoint.

What are you like as a therapist?

I’m a nerd! I dig attachment theory, emotion-focused therapy, and dialectical behavioral therapy. I admire internal family systems, accelerated experiential psychodynamic psychotherapy, and cognitive behavioral therapy, and I’m happy to pull from different frameworks to suit clients’ styles.

I’m also a highly sensitive person with auditory processing differences, so I try to consider how our sensory environment and other bodily information shapes our understanding of the world. This is sometimes called a somatic perspective.

Additionally, I’m a child of immigrants and a queer, and I’m often thinking about how our cultural frames shape us, as well as how to engage enthusiastically and respectfully with a diversity of cultural frames. 

What that means is: I think a lot about emotional and cognitive process, and how those are shaped by important relationships in someone’s life. I also think a lot about how our context shapes those processes: dominant cultural narratives, personal experiences, your everyday sensory information… all of these affect our sexuality and relationships—especially sexual diversity.