Therapy in Arlington, VA
If you live or work in Arlington and you're thinking about starting therapy, you're probably not new to self-reflection. Many people who find their way to my practice have already done the reading and have a pretty good sense of what's going on with them. What they're looking for isn't someone to explain anxiety or trauma to them — it's someone who can actually help them change.
That's the kind of work I do.
I'm a Licensed Professional Counselor based in McLean, Virginia, just across the Potomac from Arlington on Chain Bridge Road. I see clients in person and via telehealth throughout Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. — which means Arlington residents have both options, depending on what works best for your schedule and how you prefer to work.
What I Treat
My practice focuses on the issues that tend to sit underneath the surface: the patterns that don't respond to insight alone, the anxiety that persists even when you know what's driving it, the relational dynamics that keep reappearing no matter how much you understand them.
I work with adults navigating depression, anxiety, OCD, and trauma — including the kind of trauma that didn't come from a single event but from years of living in an environment that wasn't safe, consistent, or attuned. Complex trauma and attachment wounds often show up in therapy as relationship difficulties, chronic self-criticism, a persistent sense of being stuck, or emotions that feel either overwhelming or strangely absent. This is territory I know well.
I also work with couples — not to teach communication scripts, but to get underneath the surface of what's actually happening between two people and why.
How I Work
My approach draws from several evidence-based modalities: EMDR, Internal Family Systems (IFS), and Experiential Dynamic Therapy (AEDP and ISTDP). These aren't techniques I apply interchangeably — they reflect a coherent underlying philosophy. The premise is that most of what brings people to therapy is rooted in early experience, held in the body and in automatic patterns of relating, and that lasting change requires working at that level rather than staying in the realm of explanation and analysis.
For people dealing with trauma, EMDR offers a way to process what hasn't been processed — not by re-living it, but by allowing the nervous system to complete what it couldn't complete at the time. For people who feel internally fragmented — who notice parts of themselves that want different things, or who feel hijacked by certain emotional states — IFS provides a framework for working with that complexity directly. And for people whose defenses have become a barrier to their own emotional life, the experiential work of AEDP and ISTDP creates the conditions for something to actually move.
Who I Work With
Most of my clients are adults who are functioning well by most external measures and struggling underneath them. They're often high-achieving, psychologically curious people — professionals, parents, people at transitional points in their lives — who have the self-awareness to know something needs to change and the motivation to do real work in order to change it.
If that's you, Arlington's location puts you close to McLean — the commute to my office is straightforward, and telehealth makes it even more accessible if in-person sessions don't fit your schedule.
Getting Started
I offer a free initial consultation to give us both the chance to determine whether we're a good fit before committing to working together.
If you're ready to start, or if you have questions about whether this kind of therapy is right for what you're dealing with, reach out to schedule a consultation.