My Therapy Style

How I approach therapy.

Insight is a beginning–not the entire treatment.

What Versus Why:

Understanding where a pattern came from can be useful, but insight alone doesn’t necessarily lend itself to meaningful change in our lives.

A lot of therapy can get caught in the “why”:

Why am I like this?
Why did this happen to me?
Why do I keep choosing the same person?

Those questions may give you better insight, and insight can be useful. But it is only the first step.

In therapy sessions, we will focus on:

What is happening now?

What areas of your life are being impacted, and in what way?

What sets off your emotions?

What do you do next?

What would you want to be different?

In therapy, we can slow the sequence down, understand what happened, and identify the moments where a different response may become possible.

Revisiting the past

Mindfully Revisiting the Past

Sometimes earlier experiences continue to shape current emotions, patterns, or responses. Other times, behavioral and cognitive shifts are enough, and deeper trauma processing is not necessary. The past becomes relevant when it is interfering with the present or getting in the way of living life the way you envision it.

However, repeatedly revisiting past trauma without enough time, safety, or a structured way to process it is not automatically therapeutic. It can leave a person more activated, reinforce the same painful narrative, or feel re-traumatizing rather than integrative.

Evidence-based modalities such as EMDR can support processing and integration in a structured setting.

In our sessions, we will not jump directly into trauma processing. We will first talk about whether EMDR feels appropriate for you and make sure there is enough trust, preparation, and stability to support the work.

How I Approach Ineffective Coping Mechanisms

Using a DBT (Dialectical Behavioral Therapy) lens, I believe that identifying ingrained coping mechanisms can help us find more sustainable solutions.

Ineffective coping skills or problematic behaviors currently or previously served some sort of purpose. For example, while we know that procrastination creates more stress as a deadline approaches, there is a reason we still do it: it often reduces stress in the moment.

A coping mechanism often helps immediately increase dopamine, scratching an itch psychologically or provide relief. But while it solves the short-term discomfort, it gets in the way of the life you want, long-term.

In our work together, we will identify ineffective coping mechanisms, understand what kind of relief the behavior provides, and find more effective ways of getting that same feeling.

Individualized Treatment

Individualized Care and Diagnoses

Individualized Care
and Diagnoses

A diagnosis may help you make sense of what you are experiencing. It can feel validating to finally have language for something you have been living with.

However, you may also feel that a diagnosis does not fully fit, or that it only describes one part of your experience without telling the whole story.

In our sessions, we will look at how symptoms and patterns show up in your thoughts, emotions, body, relationships, choices, and daily life. Instead of stopping at “I’m anxious” or “I’m depressed,” we will get more specific about what that means for you: what it feels like, when it shows up, what seems to make it better or worse, and how it affects the way you move through your life.

Symptoms do not happen in a vacuum. Whether the factors are biological, environmental, relational, or a little bit of everything, what you are experiencing usually makes more sense once we understand the context around it.

I come from a very non-pathologizing perspective. You are not broken, and you are not flawed. We just have to understand what factors are at play and navigate them together.

Active Participation

You Are an Active Participant in Our Work

Therapy is a collaborative process.

You are the one who has lived your life. You are the one who has lived your life. You bring your experiences and your own understanding of yourself into the room, and I deeply value that internal knowledge.

I prioritize communicating openly about each step of our therapeutic process. I will explain why I am suggesting a question or skill, and I will share what I notice in our sessions, whether that is a shift in tone, an emotion that has not yet been put into words, or a pattern that keeps repeating.

I create an open dialogue for you to reflect on our sessions, especially any experiences that might feel confusing or unhelpful. We can talk about it and work through it together.

You do not need to arrive with all the answers, and you do not have to figure them out alone.

Currently Accepting New Clients