I work exclusively with high-achieving professional women in emotionally demanding careers who have architected a life they don’t feel like they belong in.
You are intelligent, capable, emotionally attuned, and deeply responsible. You have spent years becoming someone others can trust. But somehow, your work became your worth — it became proof that you were safe, valuable, successful, needed, good.
And now, despite how much you’ve accomplished, you feel emotionally overextended in ways you can barely explain. You may notice:
- Rest feels undeserved, or inaccessible.
- Your inner life is unfamiliar and hard to access.
- Your relationships feel distant or harder to fully inhabit.
- Your nervous system never truly settles.
You are a C-suite executive who has learned to lead with armor instead of vulnerability; you are a healthcare professional whose work is centered around constant orientation toward the needs of others; you are a first-generation professional who does not know how to acknowledge that the privilege of your success also involves the burden of closing the gap on what your family did not know how to give you in opening doors to rooms they have never stood in.
In our work together, we will help you connect with the parts of yourself that have become buried beneath responsibility, performance, caregiving, and survival.
So you can define your values and re-design a life you can feel at home in.
Ready to come home to yourself?I work with a small number of clients at any given time—to ensure this work is deep, sustained, and fully held If you feel drawn to this work, you are welcome to reach out to schedule an initial consultation.
MY APPROACH TO COUNSELING
My approach to counseling is depth-oriented, relational, and trauma-informed.
I believe that the struggles we experience in adulthood emerge from early relational environments that taught us who we needed to become in order to be loved, safe, valued, or emotionally secure.
For many high-achieving women, this can look like developing extraordinary competence while losing connection to vulnerability, rest, desire, dependency, or emotional spaciousness.
Over time, the nervous system adapts to chronic responsibility. Achievement becomes identity. Productivity becomes self-worth. Caretaking becomes relational safety.
And eventually, many people find themselves emotionally exhausted despite appearing highly functional from the outside.
My work is not simply focused on symptom reduction. It is focused on helping people better understand the emotional patterns, relational dynamics, and survival adaptations shaping their lives so they can begin relating to themselves with greater clarity, compassion, and freedom.
I work from a relational perspective informed by attachment theory and emotionally focused therapy, which recognizes that healing occurs through the experience of safe, emotionally attuned connection — both within ourselves and with others.
A NOTE ABOUT ME
I was born, raised, and educated in New York (mostly), where my family had been since it was just farmland. When I think of where I’m from I think of the magic of summer, and the quiet of the bay, and early mornings when it’s full of clam boats and the water glistens with yellow-white sunlight.
My favorite time of day is the time before anyone else is awake, when I can journal, and connect with God as I understand him, and feel the peace of my resting dog by my side.
I am a therapist. But I am also a writer. And a painter. And a sucker for reality television that features places connected to a personal sense of nostalgia.
My favorite poem at the moment is “I Worried” by Mary Oliver. Give it a Google.
Rates
| Individual Therapy | $175 for 50-minute session |
| Couples Therapy | $200 for 50-minute session |
| Late Cancellation | Full Session Fee for cancellation within 24 hours of appointment |
| No Show Appointment Fee | Full Appointment Fee + phone call required to be reinstated on schedule |
PAYMENT
Cash, check and credit or debit cards are accepted for payment.
INSURANCE
While insurance is not accepted at this time, Claire-Madeline is happy to provide you with receipts and documentation, upon request, to submit to your insurance carrier for reimbursement. Services may be covered in full or in part by your health insurance or employee benefit plan. Please review your coverage carefully, and consult with your insurance provider.
Accomplishments
- Cultural and clinical competence in the unique needs of high functioning professionals in healthcare, law, and first responder communities so that I can understand your world, your worldview, and the context of your internal and relational conflicts.
- Trauma informed professional backed by clinical experience supporting individuals with complex trauma histories including the complex intersection of attachment trauma, post-traumatic stress connected to professional service, and enhanced by post-graduate training in evidence based trauma treatment for post-traumatic stress and complex post-traumatic stress.
- Diverse clinical experiences across levels of care and clinical acuity so that I can understand your needs in a broader clinical context and clearly identify when additional support is necessary.
- Clinical experience supporting various clinical acuities including residential, detox and partial hospitalization levels of care in treating persistent mental illness, substance use disorders, and eating disorders.
- Unique experience across the continuum of healthcare including community mental health, in-patient psychiatry at a non-profit hospital with the state’s only level 1 trauma center, private healthcare systems, and private practice.
- Commitment to continued specialization so that you can rest in the trust my knowledge is current and specific to your needs.
- Currently pursuing certification to support couples work from an Emotionally Focused framework through the premier training program in this area.
- Dedicated commitment to the field of counseling because we become better clinicians the more we talk about this moving work we are privileged to do.
- Elected as a Graduate Student and New Professional Committee Member at The American Counseling Association where I facilitated peer-supervisory experiences among new professionals virtually and at national conferences, as well as developed presentations on the unique professional development needs of emerging counselors in a pandemic and post-pandemic culture.
- Continued service as an Alumni Ambassador at The College of William and Mary where I offer peer-mentoring to new graduates into the counseling profession, and prospective students considering entering the profession.
- Elected Student Ambassador Captain as a Graduate Student at The College of William and Mary where I facilitated a peer mentorship program inclusive of student-facilitated professional development discussions, book clubs, and individualized mentorship sessions.
- Unique educational background at the intersection of psychology, social justice and creativity that informs the way I think of you in your world and this work we do together to create change.
- Earned Master of Arts in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College, a top program in the country at this historically all women’s college.
- Earned Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from The New School, a university known for its commitment to social justice and its tradition as a home for intellectuals in exile.
