Existential Therapy in Seattle
For what stays wrong after everything checks out.
Practice details
Three ways people arrive
Nothing has changed, and that's the problem. Nothing is wrong in any way you could put on an intake form. And the meaning has left anyway from your work, your routines, and sometimes from all parts of your life. You're not sick. You're asking real questions about what it means to be alive and engage in projects.
You're on the other side of trauma work. The processing did what it was supposed to do and the past has loosened its grip. What's left is the question the trauma used to answer for you: what now, and what for. Therapists call this post-traumatic growth. I hold it as its own work, not an afterthought to the processing.
Lastly, major life transitions. Quarter-life, midlife. The divorce, the retirement, the empty house, the diagnosis, the death close by. Something that structured how you found meaning in life has changed, by your choice or not, and now you need to find new ways of understanding.
What existential therapy is
A conversation — sustained, deliberate, and more direct than most — about how you make meaning and find purpose through four relationships: with your body, with other people, with the objects of your world, and with time. That's where your life actually happens. When meaning drains, one of those relationships has usually shifted, or has been asking for attention for years.
All four of those relationships rest on facts nobody negotiates their way out of. The tradition calls them the existential givens. You will die, and you know it. You are free in ways that are frightening to take seriously. You can be surrounded by people and still be the only one living your life. And meaning isn't included with your life; it gets made, or it doesn't. Most of us arrange our days so the givens stay quiet. Then something turns the volume up.
Therapy in this tradition treats the questions as accurate rather than as symptoms to manage down. The work is building a life that can answer them honestly.
I trained in this formally and have an MA in Existential-Phenomenological Psychology at Seattle University, where I'm now teaching faculty. My training includes years of reading the philosophy closely and working out what it means for attunement, and how to actually sit with another person while they meet a given for the first time. That familiarity matters more than it sounds. The questions don't rattle me, and I don't need to convert them into symptoms or diagnoses to know how to work with them. You can read more about how I hold all of this on my approach page.
Existential therapy and trauma work
In my practice these travel together. Trauma raises existential questions by force — about safety, trust, and whether the world is the kind of place a life can be built in. And existential trouble often has old learning underneath it: conclusions about worth or belonging that formed early and respond to processing, not persuasion. So, my frame and tools work as one practice: EMDR, Brainspotting, or KAP when material needs to move and the existential frame for the meaning. My thinking on how all of this leads to lasting change is in How Therapy Actually Changes Memory.
What sessions are like
Slower than you might expect, and more direct. I don't hand out worksheets on meaning. The work is conversation where we pay attention to what's actually showing up, have patience with what hasn't found words yet, and are willing to stay with the question that matters instead of solving our way past it. Silence gets to do its work here. So does humor — this is not solemn work, whatever the philosophers' reputations suggest.
Some sessions are entirely conversation. Some move into processing when something old is clearly driving. We decide together, and you'll always know why we're doing what we're doing.
Is this right for you?
This work might fit if:
- The questions above feel closer to your trouble than any diagnosis you've been offered
- Symptom-focused therapy helped — and still missed the thing you actually came about
- Something ended, arrived, or was lost, and the ground hasn't come back
- You want a therapist who won't pathologize the questions or rush you to answers
It might not be the place to start if:
- You're in acute crisis — stabilization comes first, and we'd begin there
- You want a structured, symptom-targeted protocol and nothing else — which is a legitimate want, and I'd point you well
Common Questions
Is existential therapy just talking about death?
No — though death is allowed in the room, which matters more than it sounds. Mortality is one of the tradition's four classic concerns, alongside freedom, isolation, and meaning. In practice, most sessions are about what you're doing with being alive: the marriage, the work, the choice that won't resolve, the flatness that has no name yet. Death mostly shows up as the thing that makes those questions urgent rather than optional.
How is this different from regular talk therapy?
Less by technique than by stance. Most talk therapy treats distress as a malfunction to be corrected. Existential therapy first asks whether the distress is accurate — whether the anxiety, emptiness, or restlessness is telling the truth about something in your life that needs to change. Symptoms get taken seriously as information, not just as targets. The practical difference: we spend less time managing your reactions and more time examining what they're reactions to.
Do you combine existential therapy with EMDR or other processing work?
Yes — in my practice they're one thing. When what's driving the present is old learning, we process it with EMDR, Brainspotting, or, where clinically appropriate, KAP. When what's driving it is a question your life is actually asking, no amount of processing substitutes for answering it. Most people need some of both, and the sequencing is part of the clinical judgment you're paying for.
Is existential therapy evidence-based?
The honest answer has parts. Meaning-centered psychotherapies have controlled-trial support, particularly from work with serious illness. The therapeutic alliance and meaning-making — the ingredients this work leans on — are among the best-evidenced factors in psychotherapy research. But the tradition as a whole is not a protocol and hasn't been trialed as one. Where a specific problem has a strongly evidenced treatment, I use it, held inside this frame. I'd rather give you that layered answer than a simple yes.
Do I need a crisis of meaning to start?
No. Low-grade flatness counts. So does the sense of performing a life that looks right and lands wrong. Some of the best existential work happens before anything collapses — while there's still room to move, and choosing is cheaper. You don't need to wait until the questions are on fire.
Is this religious? Does it conflict with faith?
Neither. Existential therapy is not a belief system; it's sustained attention to the facts of being a person, and it works within a faith, after one, or without one. People carrying religious trauma are welcome here, and so are people whose faith is the deepest thing they have. What you make of meaning is yours; my job is the quality of the attention, not the conclusions.
Is existential therapy covered by insurance in Seattle?
Yes. It's billed as standard psychotherapy and covered by most insurance plans. I am in-network with Premera, LifeWise, Anthem, and most Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) plans, as well as Kaiser Permanente PPO (via First Choice Health Network) and First Choice Health. Many clients pay only a $20–50 copay per session. For out-of-network plans I provide superbills, and I work with Thrizer to simplify out-of-network billing.
Does existential therapy work over telehealth?
Yes — of everything I offer, this work translates to video most directly, since its instrument is conversation and attention. I see clients in person in Capitol Hill and by telehealth across Washington State. Some people prefer the room for this kind of talk; others find the questions come easier from their own space. Either works.
How I think about this work → Approach
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