My approach, and what you might expect in our sessions

My somatic and evolutionary approaches support the sound therapeutic principle that a client’s distressing symptoms are a path to healing. But if a client is too distressed or shut down, I’ll draw on various techniques and tools to help regulate their nervous system before we move on to do deeper work. I have a metaphor for this dual approach: your friend who cannot swim has gone too far out in a lake and is flailing about, trying to stay afloat. You are at the shore and see this, so you rush in and pull them out to safety. Then, some other day, you can help them by teaching them to swim. But you wouldn’t stand on the shore and say, “I notice you’re drowning — let’s explore that.”

Safety lays the groundwork for transformational change. When clients say, “the fact that I could even tell you that is a big deal,” I know something has already shifted. There’s something about the relational field of trust and safety that is healing in and of itself.

We may use tools such as meditation and other relaxation techniques not just to alleviate distress, but to create the conditions for change. Mindfulness meditation has been associated with growth in areas of the brain that support self-awareness — creating more space around things. Even after a week or two of home practice, clients report feeling that space: they’re less reactive and more aware of their thinking (e.g., self-criticism). It’s in that space where things can begin to take root and change — self-compassion, for instance.


With more awareness and space around things, clients learn to give themselves a little grace — to meet their own struggles with the same kindness they’d extend to a good friend (as Kristin Neff would say). And with that growing softening toward oneself, they begin to extend that same understanding outward — to challenging people and situations.


Sometimes the work involves a shift in how we see a difficult person or situation. These six reframing techniques — more cognitive than I tend to prefer — have evolved naturally in my practice over time and have been helpful for many of my clients. I use them judiciously — and not with every client. And certainly not for grief, trauma, or loss, nor when what’s needed is presence or other work.

When appropriate, I incorporate the expressive arts in some sessions — but there’s also an art to knowing when a particular modality might be useful, or whether to improvise an exercise to help something shift. Sometimes it’s best to stay quietly attuned, without judgment — other times to gently push back, or give advice. (Not every therapist is comfortable giving advice — for a range of reasons, some of them good — but when it’s wanted, appropriate, and useful, I’m happy to offer it.)

Sometimes just learning how something works — the nervous system, an old protective pattern, our adaptive emotional system — is itself healing. There’s something freeing in seeing that a symptom like anxiety is often adaptive — an intelligent response from a system trying to protect you or move you toward something you need. (The Latin root of ’emotion’ is movere — to move.)

Existential and moral questions come up often. In some ways, we are — and discover — who we are through our choices: whether to accept who we are now, to change, or to change the conditions we’re in. Together we might explore your values, what it means to live authentically (what authenticity even looks and feels like), and, sometimes, larger questions come into the room, such as meaning, mortality, free will, and agency. But perhaps the most essential moral question that shows up with many clients is goodness. Many people carry an old, implicit learning that, at bottom, they are not good or worthy — though they very much are. When we dissolve and update this old schema, what often emerges is a new aliveness and lightness — a sense of connection with one’s core self.

Our societal structures have a way of walling us off from one another — and because psychotherapy grew up inside this culture, it has often treated healing as a project of working on the isolated self. I honor the beautiful selves that sit with me, but I also hold, and offer when it’s useful, another perspective: that we are interdependent creatures, embedded in relationship; our selves are woven from and with others.

Sometimes the more practical aspects of my clients’ well-being — sleep, movement, meditation, nourishment, dietary supplements, time in nature — come into play. I have decades of personal interest and experience in these things, and am glad to share what I know when it’s wanted — always with the encouragement that clients do their own research and consult their physician. I love supporting and helping clients move toward healthier habits and real change — offering accountability and momentum (when wanted). And if medication is needed, I fully support it (in collaboration with a client’s prescribing physician). The aim is to help my clients feel resourced and more fully themselves.