My approach

Psychology and “mental health” have had a very turbulent history, and many people who consider the prospect of starting therapy do so with a lot of deep and ambivalent expectations. These expectations may take the form of many urgent questions: Will therapy work for me? Can I actually change or grow? Can I get better? can I heal? Will I be trusted and believed in? What if therapy just makes things worse?

I cannot completely sedate these questions, and nor would I really try to - as I believe the existential, perhaps even ‘spiritual’ (depending on what your relationship with that word is), anxiety that holds these questions also holds the heart of what your work in therapy will likely revolve around. Therapy is a risk. Especially relationship psychotherapy, which is the form of therapy I practice. You take a risk in opening yourself up to another person, and by opening up in this way there is an unavoidable vulnerability. I believe this vulnerability is the place where the “real work” of therapy is done. It is in this place where the opportunity for, whatever we might call it - healing, growth, change - lays. However, it is also in this very same place where the pain, suffering, and traumas of our life have become stuck.

I do not mean to strengthen the fears of anyone who is already apprehensive about therapy. I only mean to acknowledge my reverence for, and understanding of, the stakes that are involved in this sort of endeavor. It is therefore in lieu of this understanding that my approach to therapy is, and really has to be, relationally founded and client focused.

The therapy I practice strives to be aware of the risks inherent to relationships - which is thus to say, inherent to therapy. By placing an emphasis on this relational frame, and working to attune with the clients who I meet with, the therapeutic process is capable of uncovering a deep well of interpersonal insights - insights which I believe are often only achievable in a shared social context.

We cannot know ourselves, alone. Or, perhaps it’s just that we have a limited understanding of ourselves, alone. I think therapy is an event where we can learn a form of self-understanding that manifests from seeing, anew, how we participate in the world with others. And in this radical kind of participation, I will be with you.