Deep listening—sometimes what isn’t said speaks the loudest
Trauma-informed therapy for adults who want to understand themselves more deeply
Hi, I’m Kristin.
I’m an American Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor (LPCC) in Minnesota and run a private practice in Kraków, Poland, where I work with English-speaking adults both in person and online.
Ever since childhood, I’ve thirsted to understand myself. Not just my identity or personality, but what makes me who I am: Why do I do what I do? How do I make sense of my emotions? What makes a relationship healthy? And, perhaps most painfully of all, am I enough?
Naturally, that curiosity about myself extended to other people. If I am the way I am, what makes others the way they are? And if I can learn to help myself, can I also help others?
These questions, coupled with my lifelong relationship with music eventually led me to music therapy, where I worked in hospice care for many years. During one co-visit, I watched my social work colleague walk alongside a patient’s family with such skill, courage, and compassion that I had an aha moment: I want to be able to do that.
Not long afterward, I made the decision to go to graduate school to become a psychotherapist and began training in the Bonny Method of Guided Imagery and Music .
Before everything, I was a musician.
I trained in classical piano until I was fourteen, when I transitioned to violin—and everything fell apart. My teacher criticized more than taught, and I gradually lost confidence in myself as a musician and a person. Still, I committed to the violin, and later to baroque violin, through college and beyond.
It wasn’t until I finally gave myself permission to quit violin that I began enjoying music again. But it wasn’t the violin I returned to. I learned cello, and eventually discovered the viola da gamba.
Now, I finally feel like I’m home.
That experience has shaped the way I understand both creativity and healing. Sometimes the problem is not that we have failed. Sometimes we have spent years trying to become someone we were never meant to be—and healing begins when we become curious about what is actually ours.
As musicians, we dedicate our lives to listening: to sound, feeling, silence, nuance, and relationship. I bring that same attentiveness to the therapeutic space. Whether or not you are an artist yourself, I believe therapy is a creative process—one of exploration, discovery, and self-expression.
Therapy
In my clinical work, I cultivate a warm, open, collaborative space where you can slow down, become curious about your inner experience, and explore what has shaped you.
Together, we may work toward healing from childhood trauma, easing anxiety, finding your footing amid major life changes, or rediscovering yourself after burnout. I also work with musicians and other creatives around the particular challenges of artistic life, including musical trauma, performance anxiety, identity, perfectionism, and difficult relationships with their art.
My approach draws from depth-oriented and experiential traditions, including the Bonny Method of Guided Imagery and Music (GIM)—a therapeutic process that uses music and guided imagery to access emotional experience, insight, transformation, and healing.
Whether through words, silence, or sound, my hope is to help you listen more deeply to yourself: to understand the parts of you that have learned to protect you, make space for what has been pushed aside, and move toward a life that feels more authentic and whole.
“Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.”
— Victor Hugo
My Focus
Helping you find your way home
My style of therapy is client-centered, normalizing, and empowering. I help you find your own answers from within yourself. I won't tell you what your therapeutic goals should be, but will walk alongside you and provide guidance to help you achieve them.
How will we do that? We may work with a combination of word- and music-based therapies including traditional talk therapy, receptive music therapy techniques, and other creative arts therapy techniques to help you meet your goals.
My job is to provide a safe space and the tools to heal, and walk with you on the journey.
EDUCATION & CREDENTIALS
M.A./Ed.S., Clinical Mental Health Counseling
James Madison University, 2013
B.S., Music Therapy (Psychology Minor)
Duquesne University, 2004
M.Mus. (in progress), Viola da Gamba Performance
Akademia Muzyczna im. Krzysztofa Pendereckiego w Krakowie, Poland
Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor (LPCC no. 05338) – Minnesota Board of Behavioral Health and Therapy
Fellow, Association for Music and Imagery (FAMI)
MY SPECIALTIES
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Helping clients heal from trauma and the experiences that have left them feeling disconnected from themselves, their relationships, or the life they want to live. Life can get better. Sometimes it takes some help.
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Developed by Dr. Helen Bonny in conjunction with Drs. Stanislav Grof and Walter Pahnke as part of the psychedelic research unit in the 1970’s. A depth-oriented, music-based method of exploring the unconscious and finding deep transformation and healing.
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Creative work can be deeply rewarding—and deeply vulnerable. I work with musicians and other creatives navigating performance anxiety, creative burnout, perfectionism, self-doubt, artistic identity, and the impact of difficult experiences on their creative lives. Together, we can explore what gets in the way of your creativity and help you reconnect with the part of yourself that creates.
Life is already hard. You don’t have to do it alone.