My approach, and what you might expect in our sessions

While my somatic and evolutionary approaches support the therapeutic principle that listening to a client’s distressing symptoms is a path to healing, if a client arrives overwhelmed — carrying something too painful to sit with — or shut down, I’ll use various techniques and tools for nervous-system regulation before we move on to do deeper work. My metaphor for this approach: someone you know 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. What do you do? You go in and pull them out to safety. Then, some other day, you might help with the underlying problem — in this case, by teaching them to swim. The thing you wouldn’t do is stand on the shore and say, “I notice you’re drowning — let’s explore that.”

I’m always struck when clients tell me how safe they feel with me, as I don’t consciously work on that — but there’s something about that relational field of trust and safety that is healing in and of itself. And it also lays the groundwork for transformational change. Sometimes, when a client gives voice to something long-buried (something that felt too shameful or tender to utter), they’ll say: “the fact that I could even tell you that is a big deal.”

We’ll often work with meditation and other relaxation techniques in session, and I may encourage some practice at home, as well. This isn’t an end in itself, necessarily, but rather a way 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 self-criticism, for example. And it’s in that space that things can begin to take root and change — self-compassion, for instance.

Learning to give ourselves a little grace — to meet our own struggles with the same kindness we’d extend to a good friend (as Kristin Neff would say) — is something I actively help clients cultivate; it rarely just happens on its own. And as that softening toward yourself grows, something else becomes possible: you can begin to extend that same understanding outward — to the people and situations that challenge you.

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.

My practice is part science, part art, and part heart. The art shows up in a few ways. When appropriate, I incorporate the expressive arts in some sessions — but there’s also an art to knowing when a situation calls for a particular modality, or none at all; when to stay quietly attuned, without judgment, and when to gently push back; when to improvise an exercise to help something shift, or open a new possibility. Some clients also want advice. Not every therapist is comfortable giving it — for a range of reasons, some of them good ones — but when I think advice is genuinely 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 such as meaning, mortality, and mattering. Many people carry an old, implicit learning that, at bottom, they are not good or worthy — even when they are. When we dissolve and update this old schema, there is a new aliveness and lightness.

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.

Because healing happens within a whole bodymind and a whole life, our work may at times touch on the more practical aspects of your well-being — sleep, movement, meditation, nourishment, dietary supplements, time in nature. 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 you do your own research and consult your physician. I love supporting and helping clients move toward healthier habits and real change — offering accountability and momentum when that’s what they want. And when medication is needed, I fully support it, in collaboration with a client’s prescribing physician. The aim is to help you feel resourced and more fully yourself.