About Abby
Abby is deeply curious and open-minded, patient and gentle, and transparent. The safety of the therapeutic relationship is paramount to the helpfulness of therapy, so she takes it extremely seriously. Her clients and her work collaboratively, feedback goes both ways, and they give themselves the time and space to move intuitively through their work.
Abby has experience working in college counseling, higher-level of care at an eating disorder treatment center, and private practice. Eating disorders and body image are her wheelhouse but not the entirety of her interests and training. She works with individuals who are impacted by trauma, dissociative responses across the dissociation spectrum, suicidal thoughts and self-harm behaviors, obsessive compulsive tendencies, anxiety, depression, relationship challenges, and grief (including disenfranchised grief). She is accustomed to working on interdisciplinary treatment teams as appropriate for those seeing her for eating disorder care. This is not something you have to have established immediately in your work. She can help you to do so.
Clinical Experience & Approach
Abby takes an eclectic approach in working with clients, but in terms of conceptualizing the landscape of one’s life, she looks through an attachment- and trauma-informed and strengths-based lens. She is not quick to diagnose (outside of insurance purposes), and she does not pathologize ways of surviving in the world. Abby believes our emotions, thoughts, behaviors, and physical sensations/experiences make sense given the whole story of our lives. She works with clients to look at their current challenges in a broader context, in order to build self-compassion and understanding, and to begin to heal the root of current suffering. Therapeutic theories and modalities she pulls from in her work are:
Polyvagal theory
Attachment theory
Components of dissociation theory, structural dissociation of the personality, and internal family systems
Eye-movement desensitization reprocessing therapy (EMDR)
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)
Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT)
Motivational interviewing (MI)
Dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT)
Radically-open dialectical behavioral therapy (RO-DBT)
If it is helpful to know more specific diagnoses she is trained and experienced in supporting clients with, these include, in no particular order:
Anorexia & atypical anorexia nervosa
Orthorexia nervosa
Avoidant-restrictive food intake disorder
Binge eating disorder
Bulimia nervosa
Complex post-traumatic stress disorder
Post-traumatic stress disorder
Other specified dissociative disorder
Dissociative identity disorder
Obsessive compulsive disorder
Generalized anxiety disorder
Major depressive disorder
Attention deficit / hyperactivity disorder
Autism spectrum disorder