FAQ
Whether this is all new to you or you know what you’re looking for, I hope this information is helpful.
Where is your office located?
2411 N. Front St., Suite 106, Harrisburg, PA 17110
What are your hours?
My office hours are:
The fist appointment of the day is 9:00 am and the last is 6:00 pm on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday
On Fridays, the first appointment is 9:00 am and the last is 4:00 pm
Other appointment times may be available by request as needed.
Do you offer video or phone appointments?
How long are your appointments?
The standard appointment length is 50 minutes. During this time, we will have about 45 minutes to discuss the day’s topic and 5 minutes for rescheduling and other administrative issues.
We can always discuss meeting for more or less time for our appointments if that seems best. If this fits your needs, please tell me about this when we speak.
Do you take my insurance?
Like most mental health providers in private practice, I choose not to be “in-network” with insurance companies. However, there are a few insurance options to consider. If you have TRICARE insurance, I am a certified out of network provider, so you can use my services as you would any other mental health provider. For other insurance products, if your insurance plan includes benefits for behavioral health providers who are out of network, I will work with you to use these benefits.
If you would like to use your out-of-network behavioral health benefits, I offer the following two options:
- I can provide you with a Superbill that you can submit to your insurance company for reimbursement. If you use this option, payment for our appointment is due at the time of the meeting.
- I work with a company called Advekit that handles out-of-network billing directly so that you only pay what you owe out of pocket at the time of the appointment. You do not need to wait for reimbursement. If you use this option, you will only receive a charge after we complete our appointment. You can learn more about Advekit here: https://www.advekit.com/
Why aren't you "in-network" with insurance companies?
Unfortunately, the US healthcare system’s brokenness makes it a bad move for me AND my clients to join insurance panels.
Endless layers of paperwork and regulations make getting accepted as an “in-network” provider very time-consuming, even though finding an in-network provider with openings to see you is often challenging.
Being in a network can also distract from our making decisions about your care during our work together. This distraction results from the insurance company’s requirement that I only work with clients for whom I give a psychiatric diagnosis and use specific billing codes or risk rejection of the claim. If that’s not enough, reimbursement rates from insurance companies are unfairly low. These low rates encourage providers in private practice to see WAY more than the recommended number of clients each week to make a living. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to work with a mental health provider seeing 30+ clients each week!
Offering out-of-network billing services to my clients allows for a happy medium. You can use your health insurance benefits to reduce your out-of-pocket cost, and I have the freedom and flexibility to focus on working with you to achieve the results you seek in the ways we decide are best.
How do I set up an initial appointment?
You can set up an initial appointment by submitting the contact form at the bottom of this page, or calling me at (717) 585-0050.
What is your cancellation policy?
What age ranges do you work with for psychotherapy?
Do you work with infants? How do you do therapy with an infant?
Do you work with couples?
I do not do “couples therapy”; however, a couple may be an excellent fit for parent-focused coaching. The main difference is the focus of our work.
Most of the time, it’s not black-and-white, so we should discuss this as we consider working together. If the work you would like to do is mainly about a romantic relationship, it’s probably not a good fit for my services. If it’s primarily about your partnership around parenting, which interacts with your romantic relationship and may need discussing, this is probably a good fit.
Do your clients receive assignments to work on between sessions?
The idea of “homework” between appointments is not about our work together. Our work together is not a chore, obligation, or a rote exercise to “drill something into you.”
Most often, my clients actively select areas they’d like to focus their efforts in between our sessions since getting change in their life is why they work with me. Depending on their choice, it may make sense to have a structure or a way of tracking or monitoring these efforts. But that is primarily up to them and a collaborative decision.
What modalities do you use in your client work?
My approach emphasizes intentionally using various techniques that efficiently and effectively change the psychological processes shown through rigorous research to produce the positive outcomes you seek. Working this way allows for a personalized, evidence-based experience.
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy/Training
- Compassion-Focused Therapy
- Anger Coping
- Coping Cat for anxiety
- MATCH-ADTC protocol for youth (anxiety, depression, trauma, conduct problems)
- Dialectical Behavior Therapy
- Collaborative Assessment and Management of Suicide (CAMS)
- Trauma-Focused CBT
- CBT for Insomnia (CBT-I)
Motivational Interviewing (MI)
- MI in healthcare settings
- MI in schools
- MI for leadership (MI-LEAD)
Parent Training
- Kazdin method
- Barkley method
- Parent-Child Interaction Therapy
- Mindful parenting methods
Behavior Therapy
- Behavioral classroom management
- Conjoint behavioral consultation
- Behavioral sleep training
- Exposure and response prevention
- Habit reversal training
Executive Functioning/ADHD-specific interventions
- Barkley method
- Homework, Organization, and Planning Skills (HOPS) protocol
- Supporting Teens’ Autonomy Daily (STAND) protocol
This list is not exhaustive. If you are wondering if I have training in a modality not listed here, please get in touch to ask me more about this.
What is your professional training and experience?
I am a licensed psychologist in Pennsylvania and have completed several postdoctoral and professional development training experiences since earning my Ph.D. in 2013. Before starting my practice in September 2022, I worked in university and healthcare settings as a researcher, trainer, and clinician in primary care settings. Here is my curriculum vitae if you want to learn more.
What else does a client need to know to make the most from working with you?
We all wish that change happened in a straight line, and once we made progress, we never took any steps backward again. But that is nothing more than a wish – a fantasy about how change unfolds.
The only constant is change itself, yet not all change is an improvement. Learning to swiftly adapt as things change around us in ways that make us more resilient to whatever may come our way is what our work entails. That includes how we think about our progress:
I resonate with this post personally and professionally, and I hope it’s helpful to you! As you spiral upward, you will go through the same routines and relationships experienced previously. You’ll first get better at noticing where your blind spots have been in the moment and figuring out how to do something different to get a different outcome. As you practice new ways of doing things, you’ll notice increasing competence and eventually become so skilled that it seems to happen automatically.