How does relational therapy with me work?

We meet for 50 minutes each week, usually as a trio but occasionally one-on-one.

I learn about your relationship. We take note of interactional cycles that are causing you trouble, and investigate them to understand the underlying needs and your unconscious strategies for trying to get those needs met. We explore how early life experiences shaped your expectations, needs, and habitual ways of expressing love and responding to conflict. You start to understand each other’s inner worlds better.

We explore how emotional awareness and regulation can help you show up intentionally rather than reactively. We practice new skills in session. Interactions that used to be arguments or outbursts start to turn out differently. We investigate the attachment needs underlying your relationship and practice speaking each other’s emotional “language,” identifying actions that make each partner feel loved and supported. When your partner needs a boost, you have ideas about what they might like to be offered. More instances of supporting each other increase closeness and security.

With greater emotional regulation, you experience that it’s possible during a conflict to mentally and emotionally hold both people’s needs at once, rather than defending your own from a place of rigidity and fear. And with new skills, you’ll be ready to manage conflicts and needs outside of therapy.

How does individual therapy with me work?

We meet for 50 minutes each week.

I get to know you. You get to know yourself more deeply. We explore what you're experiencing, what you believe, what you remember and how that's shaped you. We make gentle overtures to your mind, your body, your spirit, inviting them into the room to hear what they have to tell us. We build a relationship of trust.

You gain insight into yourself. You explore what lights you up, what brings you joy, what really matters to you, and what you're struggling with, what in your life isn't working for you. You experience, process, and move through your feelings instead of repressing them. You identify what you need.

We consider ways you can lovingly and supportively meet your needs and get your needs met. You experiment with new ways of relating to yourself and others. You experience greater freedom from shame, restrictive beliefs, self-abandonment, and anxiety. You build inner resources to face challenging situations and cope with danger, stress, and loss. You grow into your self-trust, tap into your inner wisdom and sense of agency, experience what harmony with yourself feels like. I accompany you as you make a life that works for you–a juicy, satisfying life in which you carve out spaces where you can authentically express yourself.