Psychotherapist, PhD & clinical trainer.

I was born and raised in Sicily and soon left my island to pursue high quality education across Italy and Europe.

After getting my MSc in Clinical Psychology I immediately started my clinical practice and teaching activity. My foundational training revolved around three main pillars:

• The treatment of severe, self-harming, high suicidality conditions such as borderline personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder.

• Hypnosis and hypnotherapy for the treatment of psychological and psychosomatic conditions such as chronic pain of both medical and psychological etiologies.

• Cognitive therapy, attachment-informed and tauma-informed therapies.

I further pursued my interest in altered states of consciousness and their therapeutic applications during my PhD at the Psychopharmacology Unit, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience at Maastricht University (The Netherlands). My thesis (Trip the pain away: psychedelic therapies for the treatment of physical and mental pain) focused on investigating the potential of psychedelics in treating physical and mental pain and on the optimisation of psychotherapeutic approaches in the context of psychedelic therapy.

Beside my clinical practice, I am a post-doctoral research at Maastricht University where I coordinate clinical trials around the same topics under the supervision of Kim P.C. Kuypers, Johannes G. Ramaekers and Eef L. Theunissen.

I am also a clinical trainer and regularly hold courses addressed to psychotherpists and medical doctors on topics related to hypnosis, self-hypnosis, clinical psychology and psychotherapy.