A Look Into My Approach

How I Work

Therapy with me usually feels like a real conversation.

I’m not going to sit silently, nod occasionally, and wait for you to figure everything out on your own. I listen closely, ask questions, notice patterns, make connections, and tell you when I think something important is happening.

Sometimes that means slowing down and staying with something difficult. Sometimes it means stepping back and looking at the bigger picture. Sometimes it means laughing at how absurd being a person can be.

My goal is for therapy to feel human, thoughtful, and useful. The kind of conversation where you leave understanding yourself a little differently than you did when you walked in.

Insight Matters. So Does Change.

Understanding why you do something can be incredibly important. It can also become another way of staying stuck if nothing changes afterward.

I’m interested in both.

We may spend time understanding where a pattern came from, what it has protected you from, and why it made sense at one point in your life. Then we look at whether it still works for you now.

Therapy might involve making sense of your past, noticing what you’re doing in the present, practicing a different response, having a conversation you’ve been avoiding, setting a boundary, taking a risk, or deciding that something actually needs to change.

The goal isn’t to turn every session into homework. It’s to make sure insight eventually has somewhere to go.

I Don’t Use One Model For Everyone

People are complicated. I don’t think every person needs the same kind of therapy, and I don’t think one theory explains everything.

My work is integrative, which means I draw from several approaches depending on what we’re working on and what seems useful for you. I’ve completed extensive training across these approaches and have spent years applying them in real clinical settings. I continue to study, practice, and refine these skills so they become more precise, flexible, and useful in actual therapy, rather than remaining ideas I learned once in a training. I’m interested not just in knowing different approaches, but in becoming increasingly skilled at knowing when, why, and how to use them well.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT, is probably the biggest influence on how I think. It focuses on making room for difficult thoughts and feelings while building a life around what actually matters to you.

I also draw heavily from humanistic and existential therapy, especially when we’re working with questions of identity, meaning, grief, responsibility, freedom, purpose, or major life changes.

Psychodynamic and parts-oriented thinking help us understand where patterns came from, what they were trying to accomplish, and how older ways of protecting yourself may still be showing up now.

At times I may also use ideas and skills from DBT, Functional Analytic Psychotherapy, behavioral approaches, clinical hypnosis, parts work and other evidence-informed methods.

You do not need to know what any of those acronyms mean. That’s my job.

What This Looks Like in Session

A session might involve noticing that the argument you keep having with your partner is connected to something much older.

It might involve realizing that the thing you keep calling procrastination is actually fear, perfectionism, exhaustion, or a problem you don’t really want to solve.

We might look at why you keep agreeing to things you resent, rehearse a conversation you need to have, figure out what you actually want, or spend time with a feeling you usually try to outrun.

Sometimes the most important part of therapy is understanding something.

Sometimes it’s practicing something.

Sometimes it’s finally saying something out loud.

And sometimes it’s recognizing that you already know what needs to happen, and figuring out what’s keeping you from doing it.

I try to meet people where they are, but I’m also willing to challenge you when I think it would be helpful. I’m not interested in judging you or telling you how to live your life. I am interested in helping you see yourself and your situation clearly enough that you can make choices on purpose.