Psychotherapy is a process of coming to understand the patterns that shape your experience, how you think, feel, and relate to others. Often, what feels confusing or painful in the present has a history. The past has a tendency to become known through repetition, in familiar emotional reactions, relationship dynamics, and ways of being that once served a purpose.

As Jung wrote, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” Therapy is, in part, a process of making these patterns visible so they can be thought about and spoken about, rather than lived out automatically.

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My approach is grounded in the psychodynamic tradition and trauma theory, with an emphasis on how early relationships shape patterns that continue into adult life. At the same time, the work is experiential. Rather than only talking about your life, we pay attention to what is happening in the present moment of the session. This may include noticing emotions, body sensations, images, memories, or different parts of yourself as they arise. By slowing down and staying with experience as it unfolds, we begin to understand the patterns that shape your reactions, relationships, and sense of self.

For those who are interested, therapy can also take a more depth oriented direction. This may include working with dreams, active imagination, sandtray, and symbolic material, ways in which the unconscious expresses itself beyond words. In this way, the work begins to touch not only personal history, but deeper layers of the psyche, including archetypal patterns, imaginal figures, and the broader field of the collective unconscious.