Thank you for visiting the website.
I am an Integrative Psychotherapist in private practice, specializing in Complex and Developmental PTSD, Intergenerational and Cultural Trauma, Relational Wounds, and Interpersonal Violence. I work with clients who struggle to maintain a stable sense of self, clients who feel trapped by their past experiences, and those who sometimes feel powerless or have difficulty finding hope. I work with those who have been marginalized and want to restore or acquire their capacity to be empowered, feel safely connected, have a sense of personal value, and expand their capacity to heal the grief that burdens them. I work primarily with older adolescents and adults as individuals or couples, as well as in groups.
I developed ITH as a therapeutic healing process for Complex and Developmental PTSD. ITH is a complex systems model designed to provide clients with a path towards resilience and the restoration of wholeness. I move between different healing practices and models according to the specific story of the individual client. People are not cookies and I don't rely on cookie cutter treatment processes. ITH integrates practices designed to repair ruptures and wounds of attachment and relationship, heal emotional wounds, release the trauma held in the body, and provide a path towards empowerment, value, connection, and internal and external stability. The movement, speed and flow of the ITH process navigates the complexities of the healing process through the Middle Path that avoids the two poles of chaos and rigidity.
I am a Transforming Touch® Practitioner, trained in the healing protocols of Transforming the Experience-Based Brain (TEB). TEB is a "Trauma-Healing" modality. The modality is based on the idea that when there are ruptures during early development, they continue to disrupt a person's life. TEB incorporates presence, regulation, and relationship to repair these ruptures.Transforming the Experience-Based Brain (TEB) creates a Safe Haven where the client can begin to experience a sense of trust between themselves and the therapist through touch. Even though these changes may be subtle, they hold powerful opportunities for healing.
Transforming the Experience-Based Brain (TEB) allows for a series of ruptures and repairs. This creates the opportunity to redesign early traumatic experiences.
Transforming the Experience-Based Brain (TEB) supports the importance of presence and relationship. John Bowlby's work showed us the importance of the Secure Base while growing and healing. This relationship supports a transition from insecure attachment to earned secure attachment. This transition opens the way for the client to show increased vulnerability which increases the potential for healing.
Transforming the Experience-Based Brain (TEB) reflects the understandings of Developmental Trauma and relies on studies such as Adverse Childhood Experience Study. This study shows the importance of intervention in someone's life who was exposed to Developmental Trauma. Intervention can and will prevent a lifetime of disease and dis-ease.
Transforming Presence is an effective way of facilitating regulation within our client's nervous systems. The protocols and enhancements are designed to work with or without physical touch. The power of working with intention has been shared from therapists around the world. Some believe it is stronger than using physical touch. This is also the chosen path for telemedicine.
Transforming Touch® is an effective way of facilitating regulation within the nervous systems using physical touch. The protocols and enhancements are designed to work with or without physical touch. (As written by Stephen Terrell, PsyD @www.austinattach.com)
When is touch especially useful?
Adapted from Rhonda Kelloway, LCSW
Trauma may begin as acute stress from a perceived life-threat or as the end product of cumulative stress. Both types of stress can seriously impair a person’s ability to function with resilience and ease. Trauma may result from a wide variety of stressors such as accidents, invasive medical procedures, sexual or physical assault, emotional abuse, neglect, war, natural disasters, loss, birth trauma, or the corrosive stressors of ongoing fear and conflict.
HOW IT WORKS
The Somatic Experiencing approach facilitates the completion of self-protective motor responses and the release of thwarted survival energy bound in the body, thus addressing the root cause of trauma symptoms. This is approached by gently guiding clients to develop increasing tolerance for difficult bodily sensations and suppressed emotions.
Dr. Levine was inspired to study stress on the animal nervous system when he realized that animals are constantly under threat of death, yet show no symptoms of trauma. What he discovered was that trauma has to do with the third survival response to perceived life threat, which is freeze. When fight and flight are not options, we freeze and immobilize, like “playing dead.” This makes us less of a target. However, this reaction is time-sensitive, in other words, it needs to run its course, and the massive energy that was prepared for fight or flight gets discharged, through shakes and trembling. If the immobility phase doesn’t complete, then that charge stays trapped, and, from the body’s perspective, it is still under threat. The Somatic Experiencing method works to release this stored energy and turn off this threat alarm that causes severe dysregulation and dissociation. SE helps people understand this body response to trauma and work through a “body first” approach to healing.
From traumahealing.org
Memory reconsolidation is a trauma healing process for transformational healing rather than incremental change. This process includes safely activating a troublesome or traumatic memory that opens up the associated neuronal network, inserting a disparate experience followed by a process of consolidation. The new experience can change the emotions, thoughts and meaning of the associated recalled experience, it can also transform the pattern of activation on a neurological level. Not only is that specific experience of the past trauma changed, other associated memories can also be transformed.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), developed by Dr. Marsha Linehan, provides a wholistic and systemic contextual framework for understanding and stabilizing states of unmanageable stress, as well as the impacts of developmental trauma and other invalidating and adverse experiences. My attraction to DBT was grounded in its non-pathologizing view of problematic survival strategies, management patterns, and defensive accommodations. DBT does not see people as broken, bad or incompetent. DBT sees high intensity states of activation and problematic management patterns as the result of the intersection of an invalidating environment and the individual's emotional sensitivity. DBT is not necessarily a healing modality in itself, but it can provide a path towards the stabilization and safety needed for healing to unfold. The DBT process itself is quite effective for managing the movement, speed and flow of acquiring skills and expanding the options for increasing distress tolerance, emotion regulation, interpersonal effectiveness and self stabilization through mindfulness, while reducing emotional suffering through increasing tolerance and acceptance strategies. DBT attempts to find the middle path of acceptance and change, and rigidity and chaos.
I have been teaching DBT skills to individuals, families and groups of adolescents and adults since the mid-1990s. I became the team leader for the first comprehensive DBT program in a Partial Hospitalization Program in the Chicago area, at Evanston Hospital, and later developed a trauma focused DBT program at The Center for Contextual Change. A fundamental premise of DBT is that clients are always doing the best they can, and at the same time, they may need to try hard to learn and practice new skills. DBT is not always the stabilization method that best suits a client, but for a lot of clients it can be a very important piece of an effective, integrative healing process.
Today | By Appointment |
If you have an emergency after hours, on the weekend, or when I am out of the office, please go to your nearest emergency room. Otherwise I will try to get back to you within 48 hours.
July 17, 2026 9:30 - 4:30 6 CEUs Cost $180 (Partial scholarships may be available)
This training is an introduction to Integrative Trauma Healing and the ITH groups. ITH is a decolonized complex systems model and healing process that holds the complexities of the stories of trauma and grief, as well as the impact of the experiences of powerlessness, of being alone, and of being diminished and without any sense of control. It is a process grounded in the actual story of the individual, and often their ancestors, which is witnessed and held with curiosity and compassion. It is a process intended to reorganize and move the complex impacts of trauma towards the restoration of internal resources and the emergence of balance, wholeness and coherence. .Participants in this training are automatically eligible to apply to a monthly Consultation Group beginning in September of 2026.
Learn practical techniques to manage stress and improve your overall well-being.
Discover constructive ways to express and manage anger, and improve your relationships.
Learn how to boost your self-esteem and develop a more positive self-image.
Find support and guidance during challenging transitions such as divorce, career changes, and more.
Get help overcoming addiction and learn how to develop healthier habits and behaviors.
This wisdom circle begins with an introduction to the conceptual framework of ITH. The foundational driving force of ITH is the embodied presence of the practitioner. As therapists, often our attention is focused on interventions and problem solving. However healing starts with our most important resource and intervention, our own well regulated presence. Participants will then learn how to move into, and then from, the starting point of presence to Mindfulness in Threes, (therapist own self, the client, and the process in the moment), to Embodied Empathy and Empathic Resonance. These are the foundational building blocks of healing. This learning circle will include experiential learning, dialogue and introduction to conceptional frameworks of presence and empathy. Date: June 26, 2026 Location: Oakton Community Center Skokie 4701 Oakton St. Skokie, Ill. 60076 Time: 9:30 - 4:30 pm 6 CEUs Cost: $180
Partial Scholarships May Be Available