Frequently Asked Questions

No, I am not contracted with any insurance companies. If you want to learn more about why therapists make the decision not to work with insurance, see Pro Publica’s investigatory piece on this topic, Why I Left the Network, published in 2024.

If your insurance plan offers out-of-network coverage for mental health benefits, you may be able to submit an invoice and receive partial reimbursement for the cost of our sessions. When looking into this with your insurance company, be sure to ask if there is a deductible you must meet, and if there is a copay or percentage of the cost that you will be responsible for. Insurance companies usually require that I give a DSM diagnosis in order to reimburse sessions. If you decide to go this route, we will have a discussion about an appropriate diagnosis before I add that to your file. I will never give a diagnosis without discussing it with you first.

Yes, with caveats. We can talk about this in your consult.

For new clients, I require weekly sessions at a standing appointment time. Long-term clients who are ready to reduce their frequency of sessions are welcome to self-schedule for periodic check-ins as openings in my calendar become available. 

I currently see clients for therapy on Mondays and Tuesdays. I reserve the remainder of my week for my work with The Kiln. 

I offer both online and in-person sessions. In-person sessions take place in my office in SE Portland. Online therapy is available to anyone in the state of Oregon.

While this question is essentially impossible to answer without knowing more about your specific situation, and the course of therapy varies considerably depending on the client, I do expect clients to see at least some benefit after working together for a few sessions, especially once we jump into the thick of trauma processing. 

The short answer is yes. Trauma processing therapy is most effective when clients are doing some work outside of session to keep things moving. I will ask you to do various things in between our sessions so that our in-session work is as effective as possible. 

However, I cringe a little at the term “homework” because of its association with worksheets – which I hate – and with boring assignments that don’t have any relation to someone’s actual life. This won’t be that kind of homework. I’ll make sure what I’m asking you to do outside of session is productive, and relevant to your specific needs.

Probably. If you have a diagnosis that carries a lot of stigma and you’re worried about it scaring therapists off (or you’ve had a past experience where this has happened), let’s talk about it. I emphatically don’t believe that any particular mental health diagnosis disqualifies someone from trauma processing therapy, and assess appropriateness for treatment on an individual basis. 

If you have a diagnosis that is outside my area of treatment expertise (such as a substance use or eating disorder) and I observe that at some point the symptoms are making trauma processing work difficult or impossible, we will pause the process and I will refer you to someone who specializes in targeted treatment for that diagnosis before we proceed further. 

No. I write all my own copy, the website was designed by Anjana Duff of Humming Soul Creative, and brand photography is by Summer Hughes.