Individual Therapy
Understanding the patterns you want to get unstuck from.
Many of us work hard to push against the currents we feel inside – to override, outthink, or simply outlast the parts of ourselves that keep showing up in ways we don't want.
Maybe you feel inhibited and struggle to be your authentic self around others.
Maybe you know you're a people-pleaser and you work hard on being assertive, but saying no is still so hard, every single time. Maybe you keep finding yourself in the same kinds of unsatisfying relationship dynamics over and over. Maybe you want to make a change, let go of a habit, try something new, but when it comes time to actually do it, something stops you. Maybe the world just feels heavier than it used to, and you're not sure why.
If any of this sounds familiar, you're in the right place. I often work with people who are insightful and self-aware, but find themselves stuck in patterns they can't think their way out of, and need an outside guide to help them get to what's really going on under the surface and how to get unstuck.
Your patterns make sense and that's actually the key to changing them.
The parts of yourself you most want to change aren't random or broken. They're intelligent. At some point – often early in life – you learned something about yourself, others, or the world, and your mind and body adapted accordingly. Those adaptations became patterns. And even when those learnings stop working or no longer fit, they tend to stick around, because somewhere underneath, to a past version of you they still feel necessary.
Rather than trying to override your patterns through willpower or insight alone, we work to understand them emotionally, from the inside. What is this pattern actually protecting? What would it mean to let it go? What does it know that you haven't fully heard yet?
Therapy generally moves through three phases, which can be repeated many times with many different problem patterns:
Find the pattern—we name the problem that keeps showing up and get curious about it rather than fighting it
Discover the emotional logic underneath—we uncover the emotional knowing that's been driving it, meet it with understanding, and integrate deeply
Create a new experience—not just a new insight, but a felt, emotional shift that gives your brain something genuinely new to work with
Take the experience of feeling inhibited around others, or not quite able to show up as yourself. On the surface it might look like shyness, or anxiety, or low confidence. But underneath there's often an emotional knowing: if I'm too much, I'll push people away. If I'm fully myself, I won't be accepted. That knowing made sense once. It might have even been true at that previous moment in your life. And until we find it and really sit with it, no amount of effort to "just be yourself" will touch it, because it’s still true, in memory.
The shift happens when you have a new experience – something felt, not just understood – that genuinely contradicts the old learning, AND you hold that new experience side-by-side with the old memory and old learning. When that happens, the brain doesn't just add new information on top of the old. It actually updates. The pattern softens. Things that felt impossible start to feel available.
And while this is individual work, much of what we explore may be relational. Many of the people I work with one-on-one are trying to understand their patterns with others – why they keep showing up a certain way in relationships, why connection feels hard, what gets in the way of real intimacy. You don't need a partner in the room for that work to be powerful.
Ready to take the next step?
In individual therapy work:
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There are a lot of explanations of what trauma is out there, here's mine:
When something truly terrible happens, our whole system struggles. Our brain has to make sense of the experience somehow. I love what researcher Lisa Feldman Barrett has said: "The body doesn't keep the score. Your brain keeps the score, and your body is the scorecard."
Part of what helps us move through trauma is how supported we are during the experience itself and in the aftermath. Do we have caring people to turn to? Does anyone see and understand what we've been through? When we don't get enough comfort and care, our brain may not get the signal that it's safe to relax now. It stays on guard. Therapy helps the whole mind-body system experience the difference between what was true then and what is true now.
But trauma isn't only about the memory of what happened. It's also about what our brain learned as a result: about ourselves, about others, about the world. Those learnings are the brain's attempt to protect us from ever being hurt that way again. And they're intelligent. They made sense.
Maybe some of these sound familiar:
"I didn't see it coming when this person hurt me, so I can't trust myself."
"The world is scary and unpredictable, so I need to always be on alert for danger."
"This memory is too big and scary – if I let myself experience it, it will completely overwhelm me."
These emotional learnings aren't character flaws or signs that something is permanently wrong. They're conclusions a very overwhelmed nervous system came to, doing the best it could. And they can be unlearned in therapy.
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Emotions get a bad reputation. We're often taught, explicitly or implicitly, that emotions are problems to be managed, suppressed, or overcome. But in my work, emotions are information. They're messengers trying to get your attention, and every single one of them makes sense. Anger might say, “something important to you is being violated – stand up for yourself.”
Sadness and longing might say: “you care deeply about something or someone — this matters to you.”
Disgust might say, “Yuck, something isn't right for you – move away or say no, thank you.” When we learn to listen to emotions rather than fight them, they become doorways into understanding ourselves more fully.
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Most sessions begin simply: "Do you know where you want to start today?" Sometimes we'll briefly revisit what came up last time, or what's happened in between sessions.
Then we move into the focused work on the problem pattern you want to focus on.
We leave time at the end to reflect on what came up and what you're taking with you. I often use a simple “index card” exercise where you write down what you want to remember from the session. And "homework" in my practice isn't worksheets – it's usually working on some kind of noticing or tracking what comes up related to the problem pattern between sessions, so the work doesn't stay confined to the therapy room.
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A lot of individual therapy is really about understanding your relationship to things — to yourself, to others, to your emotions, to your body. How do you talk to yourself when you make a mistake? Where do you feel tension in your body and what’s it trying to tell you? How do you show up in close relationships, and what gets in the way of feeling truly connected?
Areas I often work on with clients include:
Relationships with romantic partners, friends, or family members; dating or getting to know new people
Relationship to yourself - how do you see yourself? How do you treat yourself, talk to yourself?
Relationship to emotions, or to a particular emotion (anger, sadness, fear, etc.)
Relationship to the body - what has your body been through? Has it received enough comfort, care? What makes your body feel good? When do you feel discomfort, pain, or tension?
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Most of the approaches I use fall under the umbrella of experiential therapy — which means we're not just talking about your experience, we're creating new experiences in the room. The idea is that insight alone rarely changes things. What actually moves the needle is having a felt, emotional experience that's different from what you've known before — and that's what we're working toward together.
In practice, that might look like:
Empathic conjecture – I might gently offer a guess about what you're feeling underneath, and we see if it lands. Sometimes having someone name something you couldn't quite reach yourself provides relief, and a natural next place to explore.
Therapeutic transparency – I share what I'm noticing in the room, in real time. If something moves me, or if I notice a shift in you, I'll say so. The relationship between us is itself part of the work.
Sentence completion – finishing an open-ended sentence out loud can unlock something you didn't know was there. It bypasses the part of your brain that's good at explaining yourself and goes somewhere more honest.
Tracking somatic sensations — we pay attention to what's happening in your body as we talk. Tightness in the chest, a lump in the throat, a sudden lightness or sense of calm – the body knows things before the mind does.
Parts work – most people associate this with Internal Family Systems (IFS), but parts work can be used anytime we need to acknowledge the complexity of human existence!
My primary theoretical frameworks are Coherence Therapy, Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), and Emotion Awareness and Expression Therapy (EAET). I also draw on interventions from other experiential modalities depending on what you and I are working through together.
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Here's what I see in the people I work with.
A pattern that once felt automatic and immovable starts to shift. An emotional knowing that's been running the show quietly updates. Things that felt impossible start to feel available.
And then, people tell me that they start to experience the following:
My emotional world feels more clear and coherent. I have words for what I'm feeling and thinking, and my own experience makes sense to me.
I can communicate clearly with the people who matter most.
I can be myself around loved ones, and around people I've just met.
I feel flexible. I can read a situation and respond to it, rather than reacting from an old script.
I know myself. And I like, maybe even love, who I am.
I feel generally at ease in my body. I know what makes it feel good.
I can stay connected to others even when difficult emotions are present, mine or theirs.
I see my emotions as allies, not adversaries.