MY APPROACH TO THERAPY
Depth-oriented, trauma-informed, and grounded in lived experience
Therapy is not about fixing you. It's about reconnecting you with what's already alive inside you.
THIS APPROACH IS FOR YOU IF:
You want therapy that works with both mind and body
You can analyze your experience but struggle to feel it in your body
You want more than coping skills—you want to understand what's actually happening inside
You sense that healing requires both depth and safety
You're ready to work with trauma at the level where it lives
You value intellectual rigor alongside emotional attunement
You're willing to slow down and engage honestly with your inner experience
In-person sessions on Capitol Hill are especially powerful for the embodied, relational aspects of this work.
The body is our general medium for having a world.
— Maurice Merleau-Ponty
WHAT THIS WORK FEELS LIKE
We slow down. Way down.
There's space for the thing you can't name yet. For the moment when your voice changes and neither of us pretends it didn't happen. For the silence that isn't empty.
You don't have to arrive with insight. You don't have to be articulate about your pain. We find it together—in your body, in the moment, in the space between us.
This isn't therapy that stays in your head. We track what's happening in your body as you're talking—the shift in your breathing, the way your eyes go distant, the moment your voice flattens, the impulse to change the subject right when something important surfaces.
Those aren't distractions from therapy. They're the therapy. That's where trauma lives, and that's where it heals.
WHAT BECOMES POSSIBLE
Understanding yourself from the inside instead of analyzing yourself from the outside.
Emotions that flow instead of flood or freeze. A body that feels like yours. Relationships where you can stay present through difficulty.
Access to parts of yourself that had to go offline years ago. Choices you couldn't see before because survival was taking all the bandwidth.
This isn't symptom management. It's coming home to yourself.
METHODS I INTEGRATE
Trauma doesn't resolve through insight alone.
It lives in:
Reflexive survival responses
Tightening and bracing
Numbness and shutdown
Reenactments and protective patterns
Shame
Emotional overwhelm
Disconnection from the body
I usually start with whatever lets your system feel safest—sometimes that's just talking, sometimes it's Brainspotting, sometimes it's a low-dose ketamine session so things don't feel so sharp. We'll figure out together what your nervous system needs.
The modalities I draw from include:
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) A structured, evidence-based trauma therapy that helps release the emotional and somatic charge of overwhelming memories. It allows you to integrate the past rather than keep reliving it.
Brainspotting A deeper-access modality for trauma stored beneath words. It can unlock emotional states that feel frozen, unreachable, or "offline," especially for clients who tend to shut down or feel numb.
Flash Technique A gentle, low-distress method used when trauma feels too overwhelming to approach directly. Flash reduces emotional intensity without flooding or retraumatization. Especially helpful for clients who fear being overwhelmed.
Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP) Offered in collaboration with Journey Clinical. When appropriate, KAP can help soften defenses and increase emotional access, especially for clients struggling with depression, numbness, shutdown, or long-standing trauma patterns.
I provide: preparation, dosing support, integration sessions. I do not prescribe or dispense ketamine. All medical services are handled by a prescriber.
I also offer psychedelic integration therapy for clients who've had experiences with other substances and need support making sense of what surfaced.
Relational Trauma Work We work moment-by-moment with shame, fear, emotional avoidance, attachment injuries, unmet developmental needs, and parts of you that disconnect to stay safe. Your internal world often learned to protect itself in isolation. In therapy, those patterns finally have a place to be seen and reorganized through connection.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) For clients who benefit from explicit work with values, psychological flexibility, and reducing the grip of avoidance patterns. ACT helps you move toward what matters even when difficult thoughts and feelings show up.
THE THERAPY PROCESS
We slow down and understand your nervous system. We build language for what you feel—even when you're not sure how to name it.
We work with what's happening in your body. Not to push you, but to help you stay present with what has always felt overwhelming.
We process trauma when your system is ready. Through EMDR, Brainspotting, Flash, relational work, or KAP, depending on your capacity and needs.
We explore the deeper layers. Meaning, identity, relationships, longing, agency, shame, boundaries, and how you want to live now.
We integrate. Change becomes felt, embodied, and sustainable.
A DEPTH-ORIENTED, EXISTENTIAL–PHENOMENOLOGICAL FOUNDATION
This is the core of my work.
Existential and phenomenological therapy focus on:
How your experience actually shows up in the moment
The textures of emotion, body, and awareness
How trauma shapes your sense of self, relationship, and meaning
The patterns you've learned to survive
The identity questions that emerge as you begin to heal
Instead of trying to correct your symptoms from the outside, we turn toward:
How your emotions organize
How your nervous system responds
What feels frightening or unreachable
What your body has been carrying
What you long for but don't yet trust
What has felt fragmented, unspeakable, or out of reach
This isn't pathologizing. It's clarifying. It helps you understand yourself in a way that makes change possible—not forced.
A NOTE ON "DEPTH" AND THE UNCONSCIOUS
I'm sometimes asked how this differs from psychoanalysis.
While I respect psychoanalytic traditions, I don't locate most human experience in a hidden unconscious requiring years of interpretation.
What feels "unconscious" is usually pre-reflective—already alive in your body, emotions, and relational patterns right now. We bring gentle attention to what's showing itself in the present moment. When paired with nervous-system tools (EMDR, Brainspotting, somatic pacing), stuck material can soften surprisingly quickly—often in months rather than years.
This feels less mysterious, less intellectual, and more immediately relieving for adults who've already spent years "understanding" their past without much bodily or emotional shift.
A SYSTEMS-ORIENTED CLINICAL MIND
Your experiences don't exist in isolation. They are shaped by:
Your nervous system
Your attachment history
Your identity
Your culture and environment
Your relationships
Your past trauma
Your personality structure
The systems you grew up in
The meaning you've made from all of it
My background in information architecture and phenomenology uniquely shapes how I track and integrate these layers.
I hold:
The immediacy of the present moment
The emotional history behind it
The developmental context that shaped it
The cultural and relational systems surrounding it
The deeper meaning emerging from it
Many clients tell me: "You connect dots I didn't know were connected."
That's because I'm tracking the whole of your experience—not just the symptom in front of us.
If you're ready for therapy that goes deeper than coping skills, this approach may be right for you
Let's talk and see what feels like the right next step.
FAQ
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Traditional talk therapy focuses on insight and understanding. This work integrates that with body-based processing through EMDR, Brainspotting, and somatic awareness. You're not just talking about trauma—you're processing how it lives in your nervous system.
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It varies. Some clients feel significant shifts in 3-6 months. Others work for a year or more, especially with complex trauma. The depth-oriented approach often creates lasting change more efficiently than years of traditional therapy.cription text goes here
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Yes. EMDR, Brainspotting, and KAP all have strong research support for trauma treatment. The existential-phenomenological framework provides the philosophical grounding that integrates these methods into coherent, meaningful work.
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EMDR's effectiveness depends heavily on proper preparation, pacing, and the therapeutic relationship. As an EMDRIA Certified Therapist, I prioritize all three. If previous EMDR felt too fast, too overwhelming, or too mechanical, we can try a different approach—or use Flash Technique to make EMDR more accessible.