About me

Hi, I’m Lauren. I’m a queer white therapist who brings curiosity, humor, and genuine presence into my work. Since the age of 15 I've been a self proclaimed multitasker, working multiple jobs at the same time, wearing multiple hats—something I both love and loathe about myself. All my years in the service industry and human services field have deeply shaped who I am, both as a person and as a therapist.

My interest in therapy began in adolescence, when I often found myself supporting friends, trying to understand family dynamics, my own and others’, and making sense of my inner world. I’ve always been drawn to understanding people and believe that my relationships help me better understand myself and the world around me.

I grew up in Southern California (sorry, Oregonians) as the youngest of four siblings. As a teen in LA, I felt out of place and weighed down by societal expectations and pressures, and I longed for a change of pace to explore who I was outside of that context. With the privilege of family support, I moved to Pennsylvania to study Human Development and Family Studies at Penn State University. During my final semester, I worked at a runaway and houseless youth shelter and fell in love with community and residential care. That experience, and my work with LGBTQ+ teens in rural areas, helped me see more clearly the impact of oppressive and marginalizing systems on the young people and families I served.

In 2019, I moved to Portland to pursue my master’s in Marriage, Couple, and Family Counseling at Portland State University and to rediscover my West Coast roots. Since moving to Portland, I’ve registered my flannel and found a place I feel myself. In Portland I have found myself working in youth residential care, home-based services for people with developmental and intellectual disabilities, restaurants and breweries, community shelters, academia, and an intensive outpatient program supporting mostly LGBTQ+ adults in individual and group therapy.

I bring my full self to each session, and my varied experiences have given me understanding and openness. I aim to create a space where you can explore your experiences honestly, gain awareness of your patterns, and engage in the work that feels most meaningful to you. At my core, I love to laugh, explore, and sit with people in the messy, complicated parts of being human. Reach out and let's explore to see if we are a good fit.

Keep scrolling! Read more below to learn about how I work, the populations i’m drawn to, the insurance I accept, and my specialty areas.

My Favorite Places to Cry…

Let's Work Together

☹ on the hardwood floor of the kitchen

✌︎ driving through the woods

☹ snuggling with my dog, Winston, watching sappy Christmas movies

IRL:

I’m probably spending my time road tripping and camping around the PNW with my dog Winston, cooking creative meals while sliding around the kitchen in my socks, or talking on the phone with all the people I love who live out of town.

Insurance Accepted

⪧ OHP

⪧ Kaiser (coming soon!)

⪧ Moda (coming soon!)

I believe suffering, growth, and healing all exist within relationships, and when you work with me you can expect to explore the therapeutic relationship between us. My hope is to create a space where you can bring your whole self, hopeful, irritated, messy, stuck, or anything in between, and I, too, will bring my full, authentic self to meet all parts of you.

My therapeutic approach is grounded in Gestalt therapy, which I’d boil down into: attention to the ‘here and now’, noticing what is happening in the present moment as we talk. Before rushing toward change, we will take a close look at what you need and want, and how you go about getting it, or not, all in service of increasing awareness of your creative adaptations, patterns, and stuck places.

Clients often describe me as validating, and they also appreciate that I will gently question or challenge ways of being that may once have been useful, but are now getting in the way of what you want. A strong relationship between client and counselor makes it possible for more honest, unspoken truths to be named, and I believe this is where real work happens.

You can expect me to ask lots of questions, to attend to the obvious and to the bodily signals that the mind often buries and overlooks, and to reflect back parts of your experience or narrative you may not have fully noticed, and to challenge those narratives that are incongruent with your goals. I aim to be with you in your process- I’m not a therapist that offers solutions, gives advice, or suggests you do something different- especially before we both deeply understand what you want to change, and what has made it so difficult in the first place.

I love working with LGBTQ+ adults and adolescents, people in the service industry, couples and other relationship constellations, counseling students, and anyone navigating life transitions, family-of-origin conflict, trauma healing, depression, anxiety, or interpersonal challenges. I have extensive experience supporting people in crisis and feel comfortable staying present without rushing to fix or minimize the intensity that instability can bring. My goal is to help clients build their capacity to tolerate and understand crises, rather than to prevent or solve them outright.

If any of this resonates with you, please reach out to set up a free consultation with me.

How I Work

I believe suffering, growth, and healing all exist within relationships.

My Specialty Areas

⪧ Interpersonal/Relational challenges

⪧ Depression/Suicidality

⪧ Life transitions

⪧ Family conflict

Populations of Interest

⪧ LGBTQ+/Queer Folx

⪧ Adolescents

⪧ Relationships/Families

⪧ Service Industry Folks

⪧ Counseling Students

Insurance Accepted

⪧ Kaiser

⪧ OHP/CareOregon/Health Share

⪧ Out-of-Pocket

⪧ Out-of-Network Reimbursement

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