In-person therapy for high-performing professionals in chestertown, MARYLAND & ONLINE therapy throughout maryland
You’ve been holding it together for a long time.
You are someone people rely on.
At work, in your family, in your relationships. You show up. You perform.
You make decisions. You carry responsibility without needing much in return.
From the outside, your life likely looks stable. Maybe even successful.
But internally, something feels less settled.
You might find yourself thinking:
“I don’t know why this feels so hard.”
“I used to feel more confident in myself.”
“I don’t understand why I react the way I do at home.”
“I feel like I’m holding everything together… but barely.”
You aren’t falling apart. And yet, something isn’t working the way it used to.
For many of the people I work with, this is where therapy begins.
Not in crisis, but in quiet recognition.
You don’t need more coping skills.
You need understanding.
Most of my clients are not new to self-awareness.
They’ve reflected, thought things through, and tried to do the “right” thing.
They often know how they should respond. But in real life, something else takes over.
They overthink. They shut down. They become frustrated, angry, or distant. They question themselves in ways they never would in their professional roles.
Many describe feeling like two different people: confident and capable in one part of life, uncertain and reactive in another.
And underneath all of that can be an expectation that you should somehow already know.
You should know what to do. You should know what someone needs. You should know when something is wrong. You should have seen it coming. You should have made a better decision.
You should know better—instinctually. You should somehow just know.
Those messages may have come from parents, family, relationships, friends, a church community, or eventually from your own internal voice.
You should have known better.
You should have handled it differently.
You should be able to figure this out.
You should do better.
Even when life is complicated, painful, and simply human.
Even, sometimes, when you were the one who was hurt.
Instead of asking, What happened to me? or What did I need? you may find yourself asking:
How did I let this happen?
Why didn’t I know?
Why didn’t I handle it better?
That is where high standards can become something much heavier.
When high standards become shame
Shame does not always look like low self-esteem.
Sometimes, it looks remarkably competent.
It can look like achievement, discipline, responsibility, control, composure, over-functioning, or being the person everyone else can count on.
But underneath it can live a painful belief:
If I get something wrong, perhaps something is wrong with me.
Mistakes become more than mistakes.
Criticism feels like exposure.
Needing help feels like weakness.
Being deceived becomes I should have known.
Someone hurting you becomes I should have prevented it.
And not knowing becomes something you believe you should be ashamed of.
Perhaps somewhere along the way, you learned to extend mercy and grace to other people
while quietly believing that you had to earn them for yourself.
My Approach
How I think about this work
I don’t see the people I work with as fragile, disordered, or broken.
I see them as highly adapted.
The traits that helped you succeed—discipline, control, responsibility, vigilance, achievement—may also have become the ways you learned to stay safe, accepted, respected, or above reproach.
And over time, those same traits can begin to limit you.
Not necessarily in obvious ways, but in how you relate to yourself, how you experience other people, and what happens inside of you when something really matters.
This work is about understanding what has been organizing your internal world, often for a very long time, and creating enough flexibility that you are no longer operating from constant internal pressure.
There is a profound difference between taking responsibility for your life and believing you must punish yourself for being human.
Therapy can become a place where we begin making that distinction—where accountability and growth can exist alongside mercy and grace.
I work carefully and deliberately.
Insight comes before change, and precision matters.
My work is grounded in psychodynamic and relational psychotherapy.
My approach looks beneath the surface to understand the emotional patterns, relationship dynamics,
and protective responses that shape how you experience yourself, connect with others, and navigate stress.
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Depending on your individual needs, I also integrate evidence-based and experiential approaches, including:
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
Internal Family Systems (IFS)
Schema Therapy
Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT)
EMDR-informed and trauma-focused interventions
Mindfulness and somatic-informed approaches
Motivational Interviewing
Psychoeducational and relational interventions
What it’s like to work together
Clients often describe my presence as steady, direct, and surprisingly disarming.
I am not here to simply validate you, and I’m not here to overwhelm you.
I will engage with you. I will challenge patterns that no longer serve you. I will help you see things more clearly, sometimes before you are fully ready to see them yourself.
And I will do that without judgment.
You don’t need to perform here. You also don’t need to fall apart in order to be taken seriously.
We will move at a pace that allows for depth while staying grounded in what you can actually work with.
Some sessions will feel focused and analytical. Others will feel more reflective.
Both matter.
Who I tend to work best with
I tend to work with people who are accustomed to responsibility.
Many are professionals, leaders, caregivers, or individuals in high-pressure environments. Some come from structured backgrounds where control, performance, and composure were necessary.
They are often:
Thoughtful and self-aware
Highly capable, but internally self-critical
Used to being “the strong one”
Uncomfortable with needing other people
Harder on themselves than they would ever be on someone else
Tired of repeating patterns they do not fully understand
They’re not looking for quick answers. They’re looking for depth.
They want to understand why they react the way they do, why relationships feel harder than they should, why mistakes feel so consequential, and why success hasn’t brought the sense of steadiness they expected.
And they’re willing to sit with those questions long enough to find real answers.
What begins to change
This work isn’t fast, but it is meaningful.
Over time, clients may begin to:
Feel less reactive in situations that used to escalate quickly
Trust their own thoughts, decisions, and reactions
Experience more clarity in relationships
Feel less pressure to hold everything together at all times
Recognize a mistake without turning it into an indictment of themselves
Take responsibility without automatically moving into shame
Allow themselves the same humanity, mercy, and grace they readily extend to others
Not all at once, but gradually, in ways that can become more deeply integrated into how you live.
A little about me
My approach to this work is shaped by my clinical training, the people I have had the privilege of working with, and my own humanity.
I know something about what it is like to hold yourself to incredibly high standards.
To believe you should know better—instinctually. To somehow just know.
To believe you should do better, handle things better, make the right decision, and somehow
get it right—even when life is complicated, painful, and simply human.
I understand that struggle personally, too.
I don’t say that because my story is your story. It isn’t.
I say it because I don't approach perfectionism, shame, responsibility, mercy, and grace only as clinical concepts.
I understand how easily the pursuit of doing better can quietly become the belief that you must be better in order to remain worthy of acceptance, compassion, or grace.
And I understand how difficult it can be to recognize that distinction when you have spent much of your life being capable.
My clinical training is grounded in psychodynamic and relational psychotherapy, and I continue to deepen that work through ongoing study and practice.
More than anything, I have learned to pay attention to patterns.
The ones people can name.
And the ones they cannot.
The work I do is not about giving you a new identity.
It is about helping you understand what has shaped the one you already have—and beginning to separate who you are from everything you have believed you must do perfectly in order to be worthy.
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Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor (LCPC) – #LC12239-Maryland
Licensed Professional Counselor of Mental Health (LPCMH) – #PC0000888- Delaware
National Certified Counselor (NCC)-#6334742
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Master of Arts in Marriage and Family Therapy — Liberty University
Bachelor of Arts in Human Services with concentration in Marriage and Family Therapy — Springfield College
Continuing Education in College Teaching & Learning Science — University of Maryland Baltimore County
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EMDR Trained (EMDRIA)
Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) Training through ICEEFT
Clinical Military Counseling Certificate (CMCC)
Grief Certification through Evergreen/PESI
Background and Training
You can begin exactly where you are.
You don’t need to have everything figured out.
You don’t need to explain yourself perfectly.
And you do not need to already know why you are the way you are.
You only need a sense that something is not working the way it used to and a willingness to look at it more closely.
You are allowed to come here without already knowing.
We can start there.