Approach

An orientation, not a method

The therapy I practice is grounded in existential-phenomenological psychology — a long phrase for a simple commitment: attend to what's actually happening for you before deciding what to do about it.

The orientation comes from my training. I hold a Master's in Existential-Phenomenological Psychology from Seattle University, where I now teach. It's the clinical mind I was trained in, not a style I picked up later.

It's also not in tension with the techniques I use. EMDR, Brainspotting, Flash, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and ketamine-assisted psychotherapy are not separate from the orientation. They're the specific forms it takes in the room when there's real work to do.

Attending to what shows up

A client says, I felt like I was nothing, but it wasn't scary. The temptation is to translate that into a category — a mystical experience, a dissociative episode, a depressive symptom. The discipline is to stay with the description until the person finds their own words for what they meant.

That kind of attention is harder than it sounds. It asks the therapist to set down what they already know, at least for a moment, so the client's own articulation has room to arrive. The work ends where understanding does: in the client's voice.

Why technique still matters

The orientation doesn't replace technique. It puts it in its right place. EMDR is a protocol. Brainspotting is a protocol. KAP has a clinical structure. These are real tools that do real work, but only if the therapist is also paying attention to the person in front of them, not just running the protocol.

A protocol applied without phenomenological attention is mechanics. Phenomenological attention without a protocol is presence without leverage. The work happens when both are present at once: the technique, held inside the encounter.

This is why I trained deeply in the techniques. EMDR isn't a contradiction of the orientation. Done with care, it is one of the most direct expressions of it. The same goes for psychedelic integration and trauma intensives: the orientation is what keeps the technique from becoming mechanical.

Where this comes from

The thinkers I return to: Kierkegaard, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, Boss, Beauvoir, Levinas, Gendlin, Winnicott, Yalom, May. Some of those names will mean something to you and some won't. The list is here in case it does.

What it amounts to, in clinical practice: the body is where experience lives, not a vehicle for the mind; symptoms are real but rarely the whole story; anxiety in the face of meaning is part of being human, not a malfunction; the therapy room is an ethical space before it is a technical one.

What it isn't

This isn't an ideology I bring to clients. If the work you need is short-term and focused, that's the work. If symptom relief is what you came for, we'll do symptom relief. Phenomenological discipline means meeting you where you are, not running you through a curriculum I prefer.

It also isn't a guarantee. I can promise a particular kind of attention and a particular kind of ethics. I cannot promise more healing than another approach. What I can say is that for clients who sense that more is at stake in their suffering than a symptom checklist can name, this is the right shape for the work.

The poetic version

If you want this in a different register — denser, more contemplative, less explanatory — see Apologia. The two pages say the same thing. One explains it. One shows it.