Trauma-Informed Stress Reduction

People who grew up in unsafe homes or endured significant challenges in childhood often learned to predict danger in their everyday environments and have trouble “turning off.”

You finish the workday, but your mind keeps reviewing what you could have done differently. You notice what other people need before they ask. Even when there is time to rest, it can be difficult to feel you’ve done enough to deserve it.

From the outside, you may seem capable and dependable. Privately, you might feel stretched thin, irritable, disconnected, lonely, self-doubting, and angry at the expectations you place on yourself.

If you didn’t have emotionally steady people around you as a kid, it’s normal to struggle to identify emotions and needs as an adult. You might notice that you can easily accomplish things other people struggle with, like building a successful business or running a marathon. But the things that seem to come easily to other people: sleeping, eating, or enjoying your relationships, are still a major challenge.

If you’ve been optimizing for accomplishment and safety, you might notice that you’re always trying to get across the next finish line. You never seem to be able to enjoy the win.

I offer virtual therapy for adults in New York navigating stress, anxiety, perfectionism, and burnout. Our work makes room to understand what is wearing you down, what matters to you, and what a more sustainable way of living might look like.

When it’s difficult to put things down

You may recognize yourself:

• Feeling responsible for preventing problems or disappointing other people.

• Replaying conversations, second-guessing decisions, or struggling to trust your judgment.

• Agreeing to things you don’t have the energy or capacity for, then feeling resentful or depleted.

• Finding rest, pleasure, sex, love, play, and receiving support brings up guilt, discomfort, shame, or even fear.

• Understanding your patterns through previous therapy, but still finding them difficult to shift in everyday life.

That’s something we can explore together.

Mindfulness & Mental Health

My work draws on decades of experience teaching mindfulness and yoga. In therapy, we’re sometimes in a practice of embodied insight together: it can mean noticing the moment self-criticism takes over, recognizing tension before you push past it, or making space to understand an emotion before deciding how to respond.

My approach is also neurodiversity affirming. We can consider sensory needs, attention, masking, and the effort involved in meeting expectations that may not fit how you function. Your needs belong in the conversation about what is sustainable.

In addition to EMDR, I utilize a gentle, insight-focused combination of mindfulness and motivational interviewing. That means that I listen closely, ask questions, and reflect your own wisdom to you.

When it’s helpful, I also offer you techniques, guided meditations, and coping skills that you can practice on your own, like short meditations, breathing exercises, visualizations, and strategies for recognizing ways of thinking and responding to emotions that are keeping you from your goals and feeling at home in your body and mind. The focus is on you and what you want and need at a given time.

Recommended to Treat:

• High Functioning Anxiety

• Health Anxiety

• Stress Related Sleeplessness

• Relationship Anxiety

• Work Related-Burnout

• Boundaries & People Pleasing

• Perfectionism

• Sleep Difficulties

• Major Life Transitions

• Stress Related Body Pain & Digestive Issues