About Gen

I’ve been doing this work since childhood.

I have had a clear understanding of emotional boundaries since I was very young. My mother experienced intense bi-polar symptoms throughout my life, in addition to a host of other complicating family dynamics. As far back as I can remember, I understood both that she loved me completely and that her volatility and depression was not something that was my fault nor could I fix it. I understand that was her experience.

This allowed me to depersonalize her experience, it did not change that it was deeply sad and scary to be with her through all of that. This example and many more are the root of my work.

I have spent my life working with myself and others to identify where the pain is and untangle it from blame and distortions. Through my own practices, education, research and clinical work, I have found that at the root of all things is a calling that is our responsibility to ourselves and to humanity to attend to. When we go all the way down through the events and stories and the felt sense, we find a tenderness so raw that without guidance we will often reduce it or confuse it.

A bitter sweet feeling so strong it is nearly a religion unto itself.

At first the discomfort and undeniable ache of it is intolerable, but I have found that when we stay we grow. Like the Grinchs’ heart on christmas morning, our hearts physically grow. This is the growth that we are responsible for in our lives. It is not a privilege, it is your responsibility.

But how?
How do we actually stay with it.

Like many people, my childhood was a mix of things. My experience of my family system was evocative and inspiring to me. By the fifth grade I could clearly see that what people were saying or doing did not match what they seemed to feel or want. I saw dynamics that were clearly painful and unsatisfying and I was baffled that the grown ups didn’t see this too. Without knowing it, I became invested in clarifying what was ‘really going on’ in dynamics. When my mom was mean, she was actually sad and feeling badly about herself, and she expressed that by being mean. When my dad was loud and angry, he was actually very anxious and dysregulated and getting loud and big allowed him to discharge emotions and make some attempts to ease his anxiety by taking control.

The understanding that our experiences are largely ours and about us, has offered me so much freedom, compassion and opportunity throughout my whole life.

I was drawn to psychology from the moment I touched it. My mother returned to college and I found her psychology 101 text when I was 12 years old and read it cover to cover. It was the best thing I had ever seen,

That gap became my life’s work.

Over the years, my clients have included founders, C-suite executives, physicians, attorneys, and professional athletes. Not because I went looking for that population, but because Boulder attracts high-achieving people and high-achieving people, it turns out, have overlap in their skills, ambition and challenges that most coaches and therapists aren’t built for.

They’ve kept going through a lot. And at some point, keeping going stops being enough.

How I work

First Sessions

Finding the struggles and strengths.
This is where the two of us will work together to determine what is not feeling or going how you would like. Often people come in thinking one thing is that focus and in these early sessions we gain a deeper clarity that changes our focus by dispelling distorted stories and gaining clarity.
We will also establish what you have

Middle Sessions

Identifying patterns and opportunities for change.
Regular weekly meeting to work through real life experiences of your growth areas between sessions. We will go into depth and identify patterns and possible points for disruption and reframes. We will have homework to maintain engagement and progress between sessions.

Later Session

Increase challenge of goal implilmentation to test capacity in increasingly difficult situations. Patterns disrupted and new habits established. Using sessions to expand implementation of the new patterns into related areas, generalizing specific concepts and harndening new bahviors into new habits that no longer require effort on your part.

Ending

You’ve met and exceeded goals.
We use final sessions for clarity what to expect in the future, how these changes may be supported or challenged and where you want these habits to expand to.

I draw on clinical psychology, somatic awareness, transpersonal frameworks, and the Enneagram. I don’t use a single protocol because people aren’t single problems. What I bring is the ability to hold complexity — to sit with what’s hard without pathologizing it, and to see the opportunity in what looks like an obstacle. In practice, it is depth coaching that reaches past where most executive coaching stops.

This is not cheerleading. It is not optimization. It is an honest look at what’s running your life — and what becomes possible when that changes.

Credentials

Naropa University: MA, Transpersonal Psychology
Harvard University Division of Continuing Education: Certificate in Executive Leadership Coaching
University of Vermont: Post Bac. Pre-Med Program completed
Prescott College: BA, Human Development & Outdoor Ed.
Colorado LPC: Licensed Professional Counselor,
North Boulder Counseling: founder & clinical director

In the Press & Media

Begin With a Conversation

If this is the kind of thinking you want in your corner, the next step is a conversation.

About Gen

I’ve been doing this work since childhood.

A bitter sweet feeling so strong it is nearly a religion unto itself.

But how?
How do we actually stay with it.