Working together to transform hurt into healing

I provide individual, family, and play therapy for children, adolescents, and adults.

Contact Information

I currently have a private practice as an outpatient therapist at:

Integrative Psychological & Assessment Services
8765 Aero Drive, Suite 221
San Diego, CA 92123

Office: (619) 384-1598
Fax: (858) 268-9810

There are many reasons an adult or child may seek counseling:

As we begin life there is the hope that it will be filled with happiness and that we will have support from others when we need it, that we will be able to trust the people around us not to cause us hurt, and that we will have the skills to overcome the obstacles that do arise. This is not often the case and that is when we turn to others for help to guide us through these difficult times.

Sometimes we need support with a current situation in our lives and other times we need to deal with something that happened in the past. There are also times when nothing seems to go right and we need some immediate crisis intervention either for ourselves or to help us cope with a difficult relationship.

How I can help:

When these times arise it is important to find the right support to meet you or your child’s needs. I will work creatively to help you or your child increase awareness of the problems in your lives by exploring thoughts and feelings, enhancing the use of the senses, emphasizing self-nurturing experiments, using expressive arts techniques, and developing a nurturing and compassionate relationship to help you or your child feel better and improve the quality of your lives, your relationships, and your future.

I feel the key is developing our therapeutic relationship with you or your child in order to use specific strategies to encourage expression of thoughts and feelings to let what is inside to come out. This process will increase awareness of patterns that are no longer working for you or your child and allow collaboration on finding alternatives that will work. These techniques also enhance coping strategies to help you or your child to appropriately express emotions and enhance your self-esteem by gaining a sense of mastery.

Why play therapy?

Play therapy is an effective and important method of working with children for several reasons. It is a way to meet the child at his/her level and begin to develop the therapeutic relationship where they are. It allows exploration of likes, dislikes, strengths, and weaknesses, which in a safe and accepting relationship builds self-esteem. It also encourages expression of feelings on a level the child can understand. Children do not have the vocabulary or cognitive development to discuss their feelings, thoughts, and issues in depth. Play is a wonderful medium that acts as their words and gives them a language to do this. It is very useful with children that are resistant to talking or that have difficulty using language to express how they feel. It creates a safe distance to express difficult emotions such as when a child uses a puppet to express how they feel or share a difficult experience they went through rather than having to say it directly. Some of the benefits include building social skills, enhancing problem solving skills, practicing anger management skills, enhancing self-esteem, working through trauma and grief issues, expression of feelings, and self-exploration among others.


There are many ways I use play therapy with children and the activities can vary widely. I might ask the child to create a scene in the sandtray and then explore together their projected material to learn more about their own feelings and issues. We sometimes create different things out of clay and talk about how these things might feel or what they experience. We might smash or pound on the clay as a safe, healthy and fun way to release anger. I might have them tell a story through dolls or puppets about the abuse they experienced or how they feel about a death of someone they love. I also use stories, games, drawing, collages, paintings, dolls and dollhouse, and any number of others activities and toys. Children are often the best at creating their own ideas for games or play activities, which helps to develop their self-esteem, allows what they are experiencing to be expressed, and gain a sense of mastery over the problems they are having.


Although I have referred to these activities in the context of play therapy with children, there is no age limit for the use of many of these activities. While some adolescents or adults may feel silly at first, it can be a very useful and valuable medium of expression, self-exploration, and insightful experience for them as well.

Professional experience and training:

I have post-graduate training in play therapy, gestalt play therapy, gestalt therapy, expressive arts, and techniques for working with how the body holds in emotions and stress such as somatic experiencing, trauma releasing exercises, relaxation skills, and yoga therapy with children and adolescents.

My clinical experience has specialized in working with children, adolescents, families, and adults. I earned a Bachelors of Arts in Psychology and Masters of Social Work at San Diego State University. I interned for a year at UCSD Gifford/Outpatient Clinic working with adults who were dually diagnosed and a year at Rady Children’s Hospital Outpatient Psychiatry offering outpatient therapy to children, adolescents, and their families. I then worked at The San Diego Center for Children in a residential treatment program for six years as a therapist for emotionally disturbed children, young adolescents, and their families. These children and their families often had experienced sexual, verbal, and/or physical abuse and/or severe neglect and abandonment.
In these settings I gained experience doing individual, group, and family therapy, working with parents on parenting difficulties, helping parents navigate the school systems to get their children’s needs met with teachers or through IEP meetings, and connecting families with other needed community resources.

Notice to schools, doctors, and other professionals

I also offer free consultations and educational training. You can contact me with questions about referring someone or to set up a free training on a relevant topic.
2 comments:

Here are ways to help you safely let out your anger and use your breath to relax:

Fun ways to let out your anger!
Letting out your anger can be fun. Often anger is something people get into trouble for or wish they did not feel causing us to hold it in. When we hold in anger, though, it builds up and eventually we explode, just like a balloon that gets too full of air pops. It makes sense then that letting out your anger is important when it is small so that you don't explode and say things you will later regret or hurt someone or yourself. There are many fun and creative ways to get out anger that kids and even adults may use such as:
**Blowing all your angry breaths into balloons and popping them (just blowing them up makes you take in deep breaths). Make sure to pop it in a safe and apporitate place- it tends to be loud!
**Making what you are mad at out of playdoh or clay, telling it how you feel, and then you can smash it or destroy it.
**Drawing what you are mad at and ripping it up or smashing it into a ball and throwing it at the wall.
**Writing what you are mad about on a small piece of paper and then taping the paper to the bottom of your shoes and go for an angry walk to stomp it out.
**Screaming into your pillow or hitting your mattress.
**Ripping up old junk mail or newspapers.
**Yelling in the shower (you can even get a wet wash cloth and throw it agianst the wall inside the shower).
**Telling a stuffed animal how you feel as if they were what you were mad at.
There are many many other ways to let it out. See what you can think of!

Relaxation skills: deep breathing....Ahhhhh
This is a series of relaxation and other coping skills to use when angry, hyperactive, anxious, or just to reduce you stress level (use these activities when you need to calm yourself down; Remember that these often need to be done repeatedly and daily to help).
**Deep breathing: While practicing these count (in your head) to 4 as you breath in and hold the breath for a second and then count to 6 as you breath out. When you breathe in imagine you just walked into your kitchen and are smelling cookies that just got out of the oven.
**Belly breath: Breath in and out through you nose while pretending there is a colored balloon in you stomach and you are slowing filling it up with each in breath and empty it out with every out breath.
**Hot breath: Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth while making a “HA” sound. This is similar to what you do on a cold day to warm up your hands.
**Cool breath: Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth as if you are blowing onto hot soup or a hot drink.
Sipping breath: Breathe in through you mouth with your tongue rolled or with your tongue on the roof of your moth, which makes a kind of sipping noise and breathe out through your nose.
**Ocean breath: Breath in and out through your nose as you have your tongue at the back of you throat and feel your breath roll down your throat and down your body.
See how long you can hum with one breath and then try to beat you record.
**Blow bubbles: See how big of a bubble you can blow.
**Blow on a pinwheel: See how slow you can blow and still maker it spin or how long you can make it turn in one breath.
2 comments:
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