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.
Every person I work with has already tried to understand, "fix," or push through their struggles on their own. Most are thoughtful, self-aware adults who know how to analyze their experience—but not how to feel it in the body or make sense of its deeper meaning.
My approach is designed for people who want more than coping skills or surface-level strategies. It's for people who sense that healing requires depth, safety, embodiment, and meaning.
The body is our general medium for having a world.
— Maurice Merleau-Ponty
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 BODY-BASED, TRAUMA-INFORMED APPROACH
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
Because of this, I integrate several trauma modalities that work with the nervous system directly:
EMDR
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.
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.
Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP)
Offered in collaboration with licensed medical prescribers through 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.
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.
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.
WHAT IT'S LIKE TO WORK WITH ME
Clients often describe our work as:
Calm • Grounding • Emotionally safe • Slow enough to feel contained • Deep enough to be transformational • Intellectually satisfying • Human • Attuned • Clarifying • Embodied • Spacious
I'm not a therapist who hides behind neutrality. I show up—present, steady, grounded, and engaged.
I don't push past your capacity. I don't rush your process. I don't expect you to open up all at once.
I help you build a relationship with yourself that feels safer, clearer, and more coherent.
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.