Areas of Expertise
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
EMDR can be a helpful tool for those who have symptoms of PTSD, depression, and anxiety, as well as for those who would like to have more insight into their thoughts and feelings. It is a multi-step process that uses the brain's natural desire to integrate memories in an adaptive manner. Through EMDR, clients can resource positive feelings they have for themselves, process traumatic memories, and practice adaptive changes they would like to make in the future. While EMDR will not erase a person's distressing memories, it can help a person have more space to grow even though these memories exist.
Creative Arts Therapy
Over time, some experiences can reduce a person's access to creativity, flexibility, and play, leading to difficulties making decisions, dulling one's joy, and even limiting access to curiosity. Heather uses the creative arts therapies as an integrative approach to therapy that can help people make meaning of their experiences, reconnect with themselves and their emotions, identify and set boundaries, as well as gain insight, self-awareness, and clarity.
Working with Teens
Adolescence is a special time in one's development that doesn't always feel so special. Developmentally, for many teenagers, adolescence is a time in which they experience fluctuations in friendships, figure out if and how they want to date, decide on whether or not they want to go to college, and maybe are just trying to get through life. It's a time in identity development that needs a unique combination of freedom and nurturance that deserves a therapist who enjoys working with people in this stage of life. Heather values that teens are seeking independence, while also still needing support from trusted adults in their lives. Heather has experience working with teens, across the gender and sexual orientation spectrums, and their parents, who have a variety of concerns. She feels invigorated by helping both teens and their parents navigate this new, exciting, and often daunting time in adolescents' lives.
LGBTQIA+ Affirming
Heather has a specific focus in providing care to teens, adults, and couples who are members of the LGBTQIA+ communities, as well as their allies and loved ones.
Clinical Supervision
Heather provides clinical supervision to colleagues who would like to deepen their knowledge and implementation of creative practices as therapists. Heather draws on her background with creative arts therapies, parts work, and EMDR, to provide her supervisees with a holistic approach to understanding trauma, attachment, and relationships.
Bio
Heather received her masters from NYU (New York University) in Art Therapy. Subsequently, Heather trained in EMDR through The Center for Excellence in EMDR Therapy, trained in couples therapy at The William Alanson White Institute, and has training in resource-oriented music and imagery from the Institute for Music and Consciousness. She has given presentations as a Guest Lecturer at NYU on the use of Art Therapy in treatment with children and adolescents, has presented internationally on the integration of creative arts therapies into psychiatry, as well as presented in continuing education workshops that focus on issues facing LGBTQIA+ communities. Heather also provides clinical supervision to colleagues in the field.
Heather draws from humanistic, relational, psychodynamic, and queer perspectives on therapy and combines this with her background in creative arts therapies, EMDR, parts work like IFS (internal family systems), and verbal psychotherapy. Heather's approach is trauma informed. She has advanced training and knowledge in how trauma can affect a person and how to work with a person's relationship to these memories and experiences. Heather is passionate about the ways in which creativity can prompt brain plasticity and the ways in which thinking outside of rigid binaries can offer people new avenues for seeing themselves and their relationships.
