Palliative Care Therapy
Teletherapy throughout Colorado
Living with a neurological illness affects so much more than the body. Your symptoms, emotions, relationships, sense of self, and medical care all start to influence each other — and it can be hard to untangle what's affecting what.
You may find yourself facing experiences, questions, and decisions that don't fit neatly into any one part of your care. Maybe you haven't had a place yet to really talk them through.
That's what palliative care therapy offers — psychological care built specifically for this. It brings the depth of psychotherapy together with a real understanding of serious illness and neurological care, the kind that comes from years of interdisciplinary training and experience.
What is Palliative Care?
Palliative care is about how you live with illness.
Palliative care is specialized care focused on helping people live as well as possible with an illness. It's an added layer of support for the symptoms, stress, and changes illness brings — with one goal: improving quality of life for you and for the people who love and care for you.
Palliative care can help at any stage of illness. It's based on what you need, not your prognosis.
It draws on many disciplines — medicine, nursing, psychology, social work, spiritual care — and the clinicians across these fields bring both shared and specialized expertise to supporting patients and families.
At its heart, palliative care asks deeply human questions.
Not only:
How is the illness treated?
But also:
How are you living with it?
Who are you beyond your illness?
What matters to you now?
What do you want your care to help you keep doing—or stay connected to—as life changes?
What care would help you live as well as possible within what illness has changed?
For people living with neurological illness, these questions can become more complex as symptoms, abilities, thinking, communication, roles, and relationships change.
New needs, losses, questions, and decisions may emerge at diagnosis, when symptoms or abilities change, or around important decisions and transitions in care.
Palliative care offers support through these changes — helping make sure decisions and care stay grounded in who you are and what matters most to you.
What is Palliative Care Therapy?
Psychological care is part of palliative care — your emotional life and relationships are part of how you live with illness.
Neurological illness doesn't separate your emotions from your physical symptoms, your relationships, your medical decisions, or your uncertainty about the future. These things are always shaping each other.
That's where palliative care therapy starts — not treating each part on its own, but responding to how they're actually lived: tangled together, changing over time.
My work in this field has given me a close understanding of that terrain — how neurological illness can shape emotional life, relationships, communication, thinking, and your sense of yourself, without ever losing sight of the person at the center of it.
Seeing these pieces together lets care be more responsive to what living with neurological illness is actually like.
It means paying attention to what's happening inside you, between you and the people you love, and alongside the medical realities of illness. Understanding how these connect can make confusing experiences make more sense — and help you keep living in a way that feels like you, even when some things can't be changed.
How Palliative Care Therapy can help
Find your way through what is changing.
Neurological illness can bring experiences that are hard to understand, hard to live with, and hard to face alone. Therapy adapts as your needs change, meeting you wherever you are in living with illness.Make sense of what is happening.
Better understand experiences that feel unfamiliar or hard to put into words — and get more clarity on what you're going through and what might help.Build steadiness with difficult emotions.
Grieve what has changed, what may still change, and the losses others may not even see. Work with emotions that feel overwhelming or hard to reach, and find more freedom in how you respond to what you're facing.Stay connected to yourself.
As you grieve changes in abilities and familiar roles, reconnect with the deeper parts of yourself that illness can't touch — and explore ways of living that feel more like you.Strengthen relationships and communication.
Understand how illness is affecting connection, roles, and communication with the people you love, and move toward more openness and understanding.Navigate decisions and change.
Think through medical decisions, changes in care, and uncertainty about the future in ways grounded in what matters most to you.Support for difficult conversations.
If questions, fears, or thoughts about the end of life are part of your experience, therapy offers a place to talk about them openly — with compassion and without judgment.
Palliative care therapy can include the relationships that shape life with illness.
Neurological illness is lived in relationship — with the people you love and the clinicians involved in your care. When helpful, therapy can include attention to these relationships, while staying grounded in your needs and preferences.
Supporting the relationships that matter.
Therapy begins with the person seeking care — whether that's someone living with neurological illness, or someone who loves and cares for them.
Depending on what's needed, the work can stay individual, or expand to include a partner or family member. This flexibility can create space for mutual understanding, clearer communication, and facing important changes together.
Collaboration with your healthcare team.
Living with neurological illness often means care from different providers. With your permission, I can communicate and collaborate with the people involved in your care when it would help.
This can be especially useful when emotional and neurological symptoms overlap, important decisions come up, or your care team working together would mean clearer communication and shared understanding.
You decide whether collaboration happens, who's involved, and what gets shared.
Frequently Asked Questions
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My fee is $185 for a 50-minute therapy session. Before beginning therapy, we will talk openly about fees and any questions you may have.
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I do not accept insurance and am considered an out-of-network provider. If your plan includes out-of-network mental health benefits, I can provide a detailed statement, called a superbill, that you can submit for possible reimbursement. Because coverage varies, I recommend contacting your insurance company directly to ask about your benefits.
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My practice is entirely virtual. Sessions are provided through a secure telehealth platform and can be attended from a private location anywhere in Colorado. Many people living with neurological illness—and the people caring for them—find telehealth more accessible and less tiring than traveling to an office.
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I recommend beginning with weekly sessions. Meeting regularly at the beginning gives us time to build our relationship together, understand what you are experiencing, and help you begin to feel some relief.
From there, the frequency can adapt to what you need. We may continue weekly, move to every other week or monthly sessions, or pause and reconnect when a new concern, decision, or transition arises.
Some people come for focused support during a particularly difficult period, while ongoing therapy may be helpful for concerns that are complex, longstanding, or need continued support over time. You are also welcome to return as needed as illness, relationships, caregiving needs, or important decisions evolve.
We will revisit the pace together over time, guided by your needs and preferences and by what feels helpful and sustainable for you.
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Neurological illness also affects the people and relationships closest to you. With your permission, a partner or family member can join a session when it would be helpful to work through something together, strengthen communication, or better understand and respond to what you are facing.
Their involvement can be occasional or a more regular part of therapy, depending on your needs and preferences. We will talk together about who participates and how to structure sessions in a way that supports both you and the relationships that matter to you.
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Yes, but only with your written permission. I am glad to collaborate with members of your medical team and other providers when that is your preference and when it would support your care. This may include sharing information relevant to your care, working together to better help you with complex symptoms, offering a fuller understanding of what you are experiencing, or strengthening communication and continuity across your care.
Some people feel tremendous relief knowing that their providers can work together to support them. Others prefer to keep therapy separate and private, while many fall somewhere in between. You remain in control of whether collaboration occurs and what information is shared.
Begin with a conversation.
Finding the right therapist matters. If something in you senses it's time for more support as you live with a neurological illness, I invite you to schedule a free 20-minute phone consultation. We'll talk about what you're experiencing, answer your questions, and see whether working together feels like the right fit.