Skillful guidance for difficult terrain
Trauma Therapy • Professional Consultation • Clinical Supervision
Hi, I’m Riva.
A third-generation therapist and clinical educator, I tackle clinical challenges with curiosity, daring, and resolve.
After many years of doing this work, there is still nothing more exciting to me than watching a client emerge into the freedom that comes from a successful therapy outcome - or helping my colleagues achieve the same for their clients. I maintain a small but active caseload that informs my work in developing other clinicians through training, consultation, and supervision.
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You’re tired of walking in circles, thinking you’re going somewhere but finding yourself back in the same frustrating patterns.
For clients
You’ve tried all the coping skills, and yeah, they help sometimes. But when will the real change happen? Keeping the past in the past just doesn’t seem to work. As much as you try to set it aside, some part of you knows there’s something there you need to face head-on.
You’ve “just coped” long enough. I do trauma therapy that helps people who are sick of repeating the same old shit get clarity, find their courage and start really showing up in their lives.
We may not have met each other yet, but here’s what I know:
You can walk through your dark woods.
You can confront your monsters.
You can find your way home to yourself.
For clinicians
Finding yourself in uncharted clinical territory? Let’s spread out the map together.
Our best work as therapists often lies in the direction of what scares us, and I’m safe to be scared with. I’m not a pearl-clutcher, and I’m unfazed by the realities of my colleagues’ humanity.
In consultation, I’ll encourage you to drop the pretense of always being the Good Therapist™ and get vulnerable about what’s really happening in the room - and inside you - as you navigate tricky client scenarios or clinical overwhelm.
Rapid, precise case conceptualization is one of my greatest strengths, and therapists who work with me usually find themselves leaving consultation with more trust in their clinical compass - and the refreshed courage to actually go where it leads.
Years ago, when I was starting my practice, I told a friend of mine the name I had come up with: Into the Woods Counseling. He frowned in confusion.
“Shouldn’t it be out of the woods, though?”
Why “Into the Woods”?
Nah. That’s not really what I’m about.
Like many of us, I was captivated by fairy tales as a kid: the angry giants, bands of robbers, and talking animals that we intuitively know represent the many obstacles we must face and riddles we must untangle in this life. I loved the sense of triumph that would emerge as the story unfolded, where a miller’s daughter could – through cunning, endurance, and a little luck – end up holding the keys to a kingdom.
As adults, we know those fairy tale endings don’t quite match up to real life – we never really get out of the woods. There are always more foes to vanquish, puzzles to solve, and thickets of thorns to make our way through.
That feeling of triumph, though? That is real. It comes when we meet the moment of a challenge with integrity, rise to the occasion, and leave feeling stronger, more empowered, and more whole than when we went in.
And that’s what my trauma therapy practice has always been about: helping clients leave therapy feeling a deeper sense of peace in themselves, knowing they’ve shown the courage it takes to confront their own stories.
I approach the work of consultation, supervision, and teaching with the same philosophy.
Our clinical work also asks us to undertake daunting journeys, where we must confront problems that are different than we expected, scarier than we thought, and require us to pack courage and keep our wits about us. In my role as an educator, I encourage my colleagues to say “yes” to these journeys into their own woods, and to allow themselves to be personally and professionally transformed by them.
