I am a Board Certified Clinical Social Worker
I also have a credential in drug & alcohol counseling # CADC II RA830399

DESCRIPTION OF CLINICAL PRACTICE
I am a clinical staff social worker in the Department of Psychiatry at Kaiser Permanente in Santa Rosa. I am on the Adult Psychiatry team and serve a varied population, presenting with the full-range of psychiatric and psychosocial pathology and life struggle. As a member of the adult team, I do both individual and group psychotherapy, addressing a variety of disorders and psychosocial issues. At Kaiser Santa Rosa, we incorporate mindfulness skills and practice into our groups and individual practice, and this has become much of the foundation we use in addition to psychodynamic and CBT/DBT therapeutic modalities. I have worked at Kaiser x10 years and have been teaching these skills during the entire time of my employment.

In addition to my work at Kaiser, I maintain a private practice. Here too, mindfulness is the underpinning of my psychotherapy practice, both as it informs my practice as well as offering appropriate skills to clients.

In the past I was the mental health clinician in a jail setting, again using this practice as a way for inmates to better cope with their existential dilemma of incarceration.

Prior to that, I worked in a locked acute care psychiatric unit in New York.

VIPASSANA/MEDITATION BACKGROUND
I began my Vipassana practice in early to mid-1980s. My first teacher was Daniel Goleman at a weekend retreat at Omega Institute. Since that time I have done both short and long retreats with too many teachers to remember. Amongst them have been : Joseph Goldstein; Sharon Salzberg; Steven Smith; Sylvia Boorstein; Phillip Moffet; Michele McDonald and many other teachers over the last 25+ years at both at EMS and Spirit Rock and other centers.

RELEVANT CLINICAL TRAINING AND EXPERIENCE
I have been a practicing psychotherapist/psychiatric social worker since 1994. My first four years in this field I worked in a locked acute care psychiatric inpatient unit in a community hospital in New York. I was the on-call therapist for the detox unit in the same hospital, supervising drug and alcohol counselors. During this period, I also worked for an on-call off-hours psychiatric emergency service that handled psych emergencies for the County during non-clinic hours.

Upon moving to California I worked as the mental health provider in a county jail and in 2000, went to work for Kaiser where I have continued to work as a psychotherapist in the Department of Psychiatry on the Adult Team.

In addition to my LCSW, I am a CADC II (Certified Alcohol and Drug Counselor) thought this is not the primary focus of my work.

Throughout my career, I have maintained a private practice, treating individuals and couples. I have strong background in both individual and group psychotherapy, facilitating both psychodynamic groups as well as CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) groups. All my groups start with a sitting practice, teaching how to keep returning to this moment as well as the capacity to be both the observed and observer of our mind. Teaching this practice has often been the most valuable part of the therapy, increasing an individual's capacity to be with what is vs what isn't. By teaching the practice of mindfulness over these many years, I have been the beneficiary as it has strengthened my practice as well.

Prior to becoming a clinical social worker, I worked in the corporate world for many years, in the fields of advertising and marketing and later in technical areas of telecommunications. Having knowledge of the stressors inherent in this world, adds the ability to help people struggling with workplace stress.

Another area of specialization has been working with people on life threatening illness and death and dying issues. Over the course of my career, and having worked in such a variety of settings, I have treated adults with most or all diagnoses, witnessing these disorders in varying stages of acuity. In addition to individual treatment, I continue to facilitate groups in depression, generalized anxiety, OCD and a crisis group.