How to use this page
If you’re looking for things you can do on your own, click here:
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If you’re considering starting up therapy and want to know what it might look like, read on.
What I treat
People I’ve helped often started off with:
- life having the color drained out of it
- overwhelm from current events or responsibilities
- “brain fog”, or problems focusing
- painful memories they struggled to make sense of and put to rest
- disrupted sleep
- chronic health issues (for example, pain, incompletely healed injuries, metabolic and digestive disorders – I am not a doctor and don’t diagnose medical issues, but I do deal with the mental side of issues like this)
- problems in their friendships and relationships
- feeling painfully set apart from or different than other people
- difficulty setting and sticking with goals
- a feeling of lacking direction, purpose or meaning
Descriptions like these cut across almost all diagnosable mental illnesses, including depression, anxiety, PTSD and other trauma-related disorders, ADHD, personality disorders and so on. We may arrive at a formal diagnosis, but that’s not necessarily the very best possible guide for how we can work.
Subjective states of being like those in the list above are in my opinion often closer to the core of what it is to have a thing you want to go to therapy for: gaining hope for resolving them means your life is already improving, and moving through them to a successful conclusion means that your life is now where you have been wanting it to get to.
After working with me for multiple sessions, people with subjectively stated issues like above who reached a state of resolution would say things like:
- It’s easier to get out of bed in the morning.
- I enjoy things again.
- Life can be stressful but I’m usually confident I can roll with it.
- The things that have been bothering me constantly have softened and faded into things I can live with.
- I feel like I’m back in the driver’s seat.
- My responsibilities are manageable.
- I remember my past, and maybe sometimes it still hurts, but it doesn’t rule my present anymore.
- I feel better about who I am.
- I’m more at peace with people around me.
- The things I’m doing and the story I’m living out feel like they matter.
Also: a shorter list of what I don’t treat.
How I work
My main approach is person-centered or “Rogerian” therapy, where I treat you as the expert, expand on your interpretations of your life and your problems, provide my own reflections, and work together to build a realistic plan to take you where you want to go.
We can also optionally tailor this approach to be more or less structured, goal directed and challenging than how it was originally intended, based on recent research on how to make therapy work better.
I also sometimes lean on acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) when present struggles involve persistent worry or anxiety, and prolonged exposure (PE) for trauma.
All of these approaches are evidence-based, having been confirmed to work in multiple studies. I particularly favor them because they work well while also being about as simple as they can possibly be. All of them focus on core factors and processes known to influence how well therapy works and what kind of gains you can expect to maintain from it long-term. All of them can adapt to your feedback (read more on feedback-informed-treatment). We can talk about this more in a free 15 minute consultation or in your first session.
My availability
I have current openings in the range of 10am-4pm weekdays.
If we have a few days lead time to coordinate and for you to fill out a few forms, I may be able to get your first hour long session in on the same week as your consultation call.
How to pay
Sessions are $95 per hour, paid by card. A sliding scale option is available to meet your financial needs.
If you have health insurance, your insurance may pay for part of our sessions through a “superbill”. This varies by provider but your remaining payment on a superbill for a $95 session after insurance coverage may be around $50. Call your insurance to confirm.