My Approach to Therapy
I believe every person possesses an inherent wisdom and a boundless potential to heal. You are already whole. We are on mission to explore, uncover, nourish, and reconnect you—not to “fix you”, and not to “perfect you” once and for all.
Your job is to show up with your whole self, committed to tap into that potential and open to acting on it to experience greater well-being. It’s to connect to your inner well of curiosity, courage, compassion, and persistence.
My job is to support your inherent capacity for health and wellbeing by welcoming—without judgment—your whole person. I’m here to be a tour guide of sorts, helping you observe and better understand all the different parts of yourself: the ones you like, and the ones you don’t. It’s also to guide our work using evidence-based approaches. My approach to therapy is influenced by my education and training in the treatment modalities below, and is always tailored with you in mind:
Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT) • Schema Therapy • Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy • Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT) • Somatic & Mind-Body Interventions • Attachment Theory • Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
Even more than the treatment used, a good fit between therapist and client is actually the most important determiner of how well therapy will work for you. It’s hard to be vulnerable and grow if you’re working with someone you just don’t feel comfortable with.
Before you commit to coming for an appointment, we’ll start with a free 20-minute consultation call so we can both get a feel for whether it might be a good fit. If not, I’m happy to provide a referral to another provider who might better meet your needs. My goal is for you to start off on the right foot with the right therapist for you, whether that therapist is me or not.
If you decide to schedule an appointment, the first appointment will last 60 minutes. I’ll send you an invitation to create a Client Portal account and fill out intake paperwork, which must be completed 24 hours before your appointment. All future appointments will be 50-55 minutes long.
We’ll continue to get to know one another over the course of the first several sessions. I’ll be able to better assess your needs and goals after we’ve met 3-5 times. You are never required to engage in therapy for any particular length of time—you decide when you start and when to finish. However, once we have completed the assessment phase, I’ll be able to estimate for you the commitment needed to meet your goals for therapy.
If you decide you’d like to set out on that work, we will meet weekly for at least the first few months. The duration and frequency of meetings after that point is highly specific to each individual and their goals, but if you want an idea of what kind of commitment you might be getting yourself into, most clients choose to participate in therapy for at least 5 months to achieve their goals, like being pain-free or increasing satisfaction in their relationships. Sometimes, that’s all it takes, and other times, clients choose to continue for years. Most often, it’s somewhere in between.
Once we’ve gotten the ball rolling past the assessment phase, my approach aims to help you get to the root of the symptoms or challenges you're facing so you can experience transformative and lasting benefits from therapy.
“Solutions-focused therapy” focuses on concrete problem solving, identifying alternate coping skills, and is very brief, only 5-10 sessions. That’s not what I offer—my clients describe the work as going deep. We will learn and practice new skills, and some aspects of my approach are indeed very practical. We’ll also laugh along the way! However, psychotherapy is an inherently emotional and challenging endeavor. Change that is meaningful and will endure requires dedicated time and consistent effort. So, in case you are hoping I know a secret to make it all concrete and analytical, quick and easy… please know that I don’t!
We won’t stay in the intellectual realm, sequentially ticking items off a therapy ‘to-do list’. Nor will we purely focus on ‘feeling things’ inside the therapy room without also changing behaviors outside the therapy room. We won’t just talk about the present, but about your past, and you won’t just talk about emotions, but actually experience and express them, with support. If you’re willing to do this, it is deeply impactful and worthwhile work that will give back to you in spades.
One more note about ending therapy: Often, the same coping strategies we rely on to manage our lives outside therapy also show up to manage our relationship with our therapist. Some examples are avoiding conflict or people-pleasing. This means you may, at some point, feel that it would be easier to just cancel a session or quit therapy than to work through a bump in the road with your therapist. The decision to end therapy abruptly is often fueled by emotion: We feel nervous or angry and believe there is no way to resolve it except to turn away from it altogether, to flee. Although relieving of discomfort in the short term, this only hurts our chances of creating the changes we desire in the long term.
One of the best parts of a therapeutic relationship is the unique opportunity it presents to work through any hesitations or conflicts you might experience that would normally result in an untimely ending to a relationship. If at any point you are feeling worried, dissatisfied, or experience the urge to flee from therapy, you don’t have to keep it to yourself or struggle with it alone. I will not take it personally! I very warmly welcome you to share any concerns about me or your progress in therapy as we work together. These moments are often when the best work happens.
To learn more or get started, book a free 20-minute phone consultation to see if we’re a good fit and get answers to any questions you have!
