How I Work

Most of what passes for therapy is two people having a slow conversation about problems. You leave feeling understood. You come back and the patterns are the same.

That's not what I'm after.

We work toward actual change, which means sessions have to do more than process. At some point, you have to practice responding differently. That's what I'm most interested in helping you do.

Early on, I do a thorough assessment of your history including the relationships and experiences that shaped how you respond today. This isn't about cataloging damage. It's about understanding why your patterns make sense, which is the only honest starting point.

From there, the work varies week to week. Some sessions we're tracing a pattern: learning where it comes from, what it's protecting you from, what a different response would even feel like. Other sessions we're debriefing what happened when you tried something different in your day-to-day life.

With couples, the same principle applies: we're not refereeing this week's argument. We're finding the pattern underneath it and uncovering what each of you is protecting. Then we'll practice different moves while the stakes are live, right there in our session.

Anxiety, distance in a relationship, the pull toward the same move you know doesn't work: most of what people want to change isn't a character flaw. It's an adaptation that made sense at some point and hasn't been updated. That's more accurate, and it opens up more options.

The goal isn't insight. It's something shifting in your life: how you handle a conflict, what you do when the familiar pull arrives, how you talk to yourself after something goes wrong. Most people notice something moving within the first few months.