Hello! If you ended up here, I’m guessing you’re in the midst of therapist-shopping. I’m so glad you’re taking steps to help make your days feel smoother - life’s tough enough already.
I use cognitive-behavioral, acceptance-focused and exposure-based therapies to help people with anxiety, eating disorders, panic, OCD, and related conditions. It's absolutely possible to learn different strategies to regain trust in your senses (even if you tend towards obsessional doubt), tolerate discomfort, and become more compassionate towards yourself.
I’d love to hear more about you, your experiences in therapy if you’ve tried it before, and what’s coming up for you now. You can reach me by filling out the contact form at the bottom of this page (or emailing me at emily@emily-star.com), and we’ll find a time to talk soon.
I’m a therapist who is passionate about helping people get unstuck.
We can work together to find the kinds of therapy activities that resonate most with you and are evidence-based for your current challenges.
Click here if you want more info about the therapy tools I use in session / what therapy with me is like
or here if you just want to know about me in general
Disentangle: an I-CBT skills class for OCD
Upcoming group
I found that I was going over the same 12-module therapy protocol with a bunch of OCD clients, and I figured it would be more efficient for me, and more cost-effective for my clients, if we did it as a group. Here’s what I-CBT and the class can do:
Teach you how to spot OCD’s tricks and cheats, and understand the differences between reasonable and obsessive doubt
Create a practice space for de-fusion exercises to reduce rumination
Give you concrete tools to help you sense reality & decrease absorption in your imagination
+ it’s nice to connect with other people who get it
I ran one full 12-week cycle of this class in early 2024, and it was the best hour of my workweek. If you’d like to join the next cycle, which will be forming in early 2025, send me a note at emily@emily-star.com to hear about next steps.
Send me a note using the contact form below
We’ll play a tiny bit of schedule tetris to find a time to chat on the phone if you’d like to talk for 10-15 minutes before having an actual intake session (those last 45-60 min, and can be virtual or in person at my office in Columbia Heights). I can only see you if you are physically located in DC, Maryland, or Pennsylvania at the time of our sessions.
I’ll send you some forms to fill out - you’ll need to fill at least some of them out 24 hours before we meet for an intake.
When we meet, I’ll have a ton of questions to ask you about your life and your goals, and that will help us decide what kinds of things we should focus on in therapy. But you can interrupt me whenever, and if you’d like to bring something you’ve written for us to go over because you weren’t sure if you’d find the words for it when we met, that’s fantastic.
how do I get started?