Hi, I’m Penelope!

I work with young adults and adults who experience emotions deeply and are trying to understand themselves more fully. You may know that your reactions sometimes feel bigger than the situation calls for, find yourself getting overwhelmed quickly, or have a hard time coming back down once something hits you. Or you may be sorting through bigger questions about identity, sexuality, relationships, and who you want to be.

Sometimes these things are closely connected. When you’re still figuring out who you are and what matters to you, relationships can feel especially high-stakes. Anxiety can turn into overthinking. A conflict can become consuming. Rejection can feel impossible to shake. And when emotions become overwhelming, you may rely on ways of coping that provide relief in the moment but create other problems later.

I help clients understand these patterns without judging themselves for having them. From there, we work on building the ability to experience difficult thoughts and emotions without letting them dictate what happens next.

Who I Help

A lot of my work centers around emotion regulation and identity. You may feel things intensely, have difficulty knowing what to do with anger, anxiety, sadness, or shame, or find that your emotional reactions affect your relationships and the way you feel about yourself.

I also work with clients exploring questions around sexuality, sexual orientation, gender, relationships, and identity. You don't need to arrive in therapy with a clear label—or even know exactly what you're trying to figure out. Therapy can be a place to explore who you are, what you want, what feels authentic to you, and which expectations you may have inherited from other people.

For some clients, that includes navigating coming out, dating and relationships, changing labels, family or cultural expectations, or the experience of being LGBTQIA+ in environments that don't always feel affirming. For others, identity questions have nothing to do with sexuality. You may simply be realizing that the version of yourself you've been living as doesn't quite fit anymore.

Clients come to me for help with:

• Emotion regulation and intense emotional reactions
• Anxiety, overthinking, and feeling overwhelmed
• Identity and questions about who you are
• Sexuality and sexual orientation
• LGBTQIA+ concerns and experiences
• Relationship patterns, dating, and breakups
• Depression, low motivation, and feeling stuck
• ADHD and difficulty with follow-through
• Self-harm and other ways of coping when emotions feel unmanageable
• Trauma and difficult past experiences
• OCD and intrusive thoughts
• Body image and disordered eating
• Major life transitions and uncertainty about what comes next

What Working Together Looks Like

My style is active, approachable, and collaborative. I want therapy to feel like a real conversation—not an hour where you talk while I sit back and nod.

We'll get curious about what happens in the moments when things feel hardest. What happens inside you when someone doesn't respond the way you hoped? When you're angry, rejected, embarrassed, anxious, or unsure of yourself? What do you feel an urge to do next? And does that response ultimately get you closer to—or further away from—the kind of life and relationships you want?

Understanding why you react the way you do is important, but we'll also practice doing something different. That might mean learning how to tolerate an uncomfortable emotion without immediately acting on it, communicating what you need more directly, noticing when your mind is treating a fear as a fact, or making a choice based on what matters to you rather than what will make the discomfort disappear fastest.

I also bring humor into therapy when it fits. We can take what you're going through seriously without every minute of therapy needing to feel serious.

Identity, Sexuality & Relationships

Figuring out who you are rarely happens in isolation. Our understanding of ourselves develops within families, friendships, romantic relationships, communities, cultures, and the messages we've received about who we're supposed to be.

Therapy can give you room to separate those expectations from what actually feels true for you. We can explore sexuality, gender, relationships, belonging, boundaries, and identity without assuming there is a particular answer you're supposed to arrive at.

Relationship work is often part of this process too. We may look at how you respond to closeness, conflict, rejection, uncertainty, or the fear of losing someone—and how those patterns affect both your relationships and your sense of self.

I also work with couples who want help understanding recurring conflicts, communicating more effectively, and feeling more connected. I draw from the Gottman Method in my couples work.

Experience & Approach

I earned my Master's in Clinical Social Work from the University of Chicago, where I focused on trauma therapy and completed training through the school's Contextual Behavioral Practices program. I also hold both a B.A. and B.S. from Tufts University.

My work is trauma-informed, sex-positive, and LGBTQIA+ affirming. I primarily draw from Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), along with mindfulness and other evidence-based approaches depending on what you need.

DBT is particularly useful in my work with clients who experience emotions intensely. It gives us concrete ways to work with distress, emotional reactions, relationships, and impulsive urges without treating strong emotions themselves as the problem. ACT helps us take that work further by asking an important question: even when difficult thoughts and feelings are here, how do you want to live?

Our work isn't about becoming less emotional or turning yourself into a different person. It's about understanding yourself better, having more choices in how you respond, and building a life that feels more like your own.

A Little About Me

Outside the therapy room, I enjoy writing, going to concerts, and spending time with family and friends. I'm originally from Charleston, South Carolina, and I'm always happy for an excuse to escape Chicago and head home when winter gets particularly ambitious.

I provide in-person therapy in downtown Chicago and online therapy throughout Illinois.