Integrative, strength-based, and Neuroscience-Based Therapy

Positive Psychology

In-person therapy in Monmouth & Ocean County | Telehealth available throughout New Jersey.

Positive Psychology

Tending to Strengths, Meaning, and What Makes Life Worth Living

Rooted in Resilience and the Science of Flourishing

While therapy often begins with tending to pain, it doesn’t have to end there.

Positive Psychology is the study of what helps people thrive—emotionally, relationally, and spiritually. It’s grounded in science, but centered in the deeply human questions we all carry:

What brings me joy?

What gives my life meaning?

How can I feel more connected, creative, or alive?

This approach doesn’t bypass suffering. Instead, it holds space for both: the wounds that need tending and the possibilities that emerge when we feel safe, seen, and supported.

What Makes Positive Psychology Different?

Traditional psychology often focuses on pathology—what’s going wrong. Positive Psychology asks: what’s already working? What strengths do you already carry? What helps you move through challenge, and what lights you up from the inside?

In therapy, this might look like:

  • Identifying your signature strengths and how to use them intentionally

  • Exploring meaning and purpose, especially during times of transition or loss

  • Practicing gratitude and savoring, not as toxic positivity, but as nervous system nourishment

  • Reconnecting with joy, play, and hope, even in quiet or ordinary moments

  • Building emotional resilience through the lens of curiosity and self-compassion

This is about creating a life that feels more whole, more connected to who you truly are, and who you're becoming.

  • If positive psychology teaches us anything, it is that all of us are a mixture of strengths and weaknesses. No one has it all, and no one lacks it all.

    Christopher Peterson

  • I'm fascinated by how pleasant experiences, which can be so subtle and fleeting, can add up over time to change who we become. I'm especially excited these days about investigating how positive emotions change the very ways that our cells form and function to keep us healthy.

    Barbara Fredrickson

How This Work Supports Healing

Positive Psychology is deeply compatible with trauma-informed somatic, nervous system, and neuroplastic treatment when approached through a lens of safety, embodiment, and self-compassion. It’s about gently expanding your capacity for feeling safe in experiences like awe, gratitude, hope, meaning, and connection—without bypassing what’s real.

Often, after processing emotional or physical pain, many people find themselves asking: What now? What does it look like to live more fully from here?

This exploration may look like:

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Feeling safe enough to experience joy

Cultivating calm and wonder as a form of regulation

Reclaiming identity and purpose beyond pain or survival

Letting your body remember what “okay” feels like

Honoring the full spectrum of your experience

This isn’t about forcing or fixing—it's bringing more of your inner aliveness into your relationships, your body, and your everyday rhythms.

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A Space for Growth

You don’t have to be in crisis to be in therapy. Sometimes we seek support because we’re ready to shift, to deepen, or to live in a way that feels more aligned with who we are becoming.

You are not just shaped by what wounded you, but by the resilience that carried you forward.

Positive Psychology offers space for that side of your story—the part that seeks growth, wonder, connection, and meaning. And even in the midst of pain, this part deserves care and nurturing.

Your body and mind carry the imprint of everything you’ve lived through, and they also carry the capacity to heal. This is a space to begin again, with care and intention, and a willingness to gently listen inward. Even the smallest shift in awareness can open the door to meaningful change.