individual therapy
your mental health matters.
self-discovery has limitless potential.
Individual Therapy teaches you how to self heal.
Are you struggling to take better care of yourself?
Do you have a hard time recognizing how you’re feeling?
Have the same problems been popping up over and over again, robbing you of hope for a more satisfying future?
All this can change. It does change. And I love supporting that process.
As a dynamic psychologist and individual therapist, I help you understand yourself with fresh eyes, a clear mind, and an open heart. I teach you to bear witness to your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors through a lens of compassionate curiosity. Together, we explore where you’ve come from, what you’ve been through, where you’d like to be, and uncover exactly what is getting in the way.
After comprehensively assessing your family of origin and other influencing variables (e.g. bio-psycho-socio-spiritual factors), I support you in awakening to all parts of yourself. I encourage you to integrate these parts into a unified whole that leaves you feeling just that: whole.
What is Individual Therapy?
Individual therapy is the process by which we discover what blocks you from breaking free of patterns that keep you stuck, confused, in pain, addicted, and more.
It involves connecting with the right therapist to build a safe and trusting relationship you can count on, giving you an opportunity to be seen, heard, and understood. Through this relationship, you learn to make connections between your past and your present so that you can consciously choose your future.
Co-creating a therapeutic relationship with me means having someone on your side, no matter what. I mirror you back to yourself without judgment, offering thoughtful, impactful challenges along the way.
types of individual therapy
Simply finding the right therapist can be a daunting task, let alone figuring out which type of therapy will be most effective for you. The good news is, research generally shows that A) any therapy is better than no therapy, and B) your relationship with your therapist is actually one of the most important factors for successful therapy – more important, even, than the approach they use.
That being said, you may still want to learn about my own approach. I work as a Psychodynamic, Family Systems Psychologist. While I do incorporate aspects of other modalities (e.g. Person-Centered Therapy, Narrative Therapy), I lead with the two listed above.
Learn more about these theoretical orientations here:
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Psychodynamic Therapy is an insight-oriented, depth-based approach to healing. It emphasizes close attention to the client’s personality functioning (i.e. personality style, personality organization, defense mechanisms, and attachment style). Everyone has their own “personality,” but not everyone thinks carefully about what a personality is composed of. It is often through our personality that we can best understand our development and current functioning. Psychodynamic therapy hinges on understanding the difference between conscious and unconscious functioning. In other words, how can we distinguish between, on the one hand, what we consciously know about how we think, feel, and behave; and, on the other hand, what we are not aware of about how we think, feel, and behave. By way of a safe, trusting, consistent therapeutic bond, clients can access this level of self-awareness and use it to transform themselves and their relationships.
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Contrary to how it sounds, family systems work is remarkably impactful for clients engaging in individual therapy (therapy without other participants). So much of our early development – birth through adolescence – depends on the people we rely on to feed, shelter, and support us. These relationships substantially impact who we become, what we believe about ourselves, how we communicate, and how we learn to relate to other people. By exploring these dynamics, we can uncover some of the most foundational influences on our development and discover how to make sustainable, lasting changes in our lives.
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The cornerstones of person-centered therapy include unconditional positive regard, congruence, and accurate empathic understanding. “Unconditional positive regard” means that no matter what, a client feels genuine acceptance and validation from their therapist. “Congruence” means that the therapist does not present as an “expert” on the life of the client, but rather as a trained professional equal in humanness. According to this principle, the therapist presents openly, honestly, and with a high degree of transparency to support the client in feeling safe, connected, and “on the same page.” Lastly, “accurate empathic understanding” means the therapist must work diligently to ensure not only that their observations about the client are correct, but that the therapist is able to emotionally connect to the client and their experience. These three factors create the conditions necessary for a successful outcome.
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Narrative therapy serves to acknowledge the client’s “narrative” or “story” – the one they use to make sense of their own life. Narrative therapists are active listeners, highly attuned to how the client describes who they are, where they’ve been, where they are now, and what their life is like. The therapist listens for contradictions and/or elements of the story that may need further clarification, ensuring that they can reflect a client’s narrative back to them as completely as possible. Through this method of reflection, clients become more conscious of how they see themselves, gaining opportunities to determine whether their narrative aligns fully with the truth of their experience. Ongoing narrative therapy guides the client through the possibility of re-authoring their story in ways that are more inclusive, compassionate, and favorable for inciting the changes they seek.
Strengthen your emotional self awareness.
The most transformative individual therapy happens with people who are hungry for change, growth, and evolution.
Sometimes, my clients are excited to start therapy, but just as often they experience a mixed bag of emotions including uncertainty and fear. I receive you exactly as you are, where you are. I’m interested in learning how to build a healthy, functional relationship with you, and in using that relationship to support your healing.
Whether or not you’ve engaged in therapy before matters less than your willingness to put yourself out there, to connect with someone you can trust. We work together to set the pace, identify the goals, and remain attentive to the therapeutic process, ensuring it is both comfortable and productive.
Outstanding individual therapy balances stillness and movement; it is alive to the present, respectful of the past, and responsive to the future.
areas of specialty
Managing personal versus professional identity issues
Understanding the influence of family-of-origin dynamics
Breaking free from hard-to-change relational patterns
Getting clear on the root cause(s) of long-term difficulties
Learning about boundaries and effective ways to implement them
Contextualizing issues of self-esteem, self-image, and self-care
Healing from the end of significant relationships
Developing a clearer sense of self, including wants, needs, and desires
Evolving from one stage of life to the next
Fear of connecting with others and building relationships
Explore Individual Therapy
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FAQs
for individual therapy
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It depends on many factors including but not limited to:
how much therapy you’ve already invested in
your current resources versus stressors
what you are hoping to work on, understand, or evolve
what your expectations are
Clients I’ve worked with tend to feel hopeful within the first month that change is possible. Developing trust with someone who is committed to seeing and learning you can be an incredible relief. It can also illuminate some of the healing path that may have been previously hidden from your view.
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To begin, I always meet with individual clients weekly. Some clients enjoy or desire a more rigorous approach to therapy and prefer to meet more than once a week. I usually do not meet with clients less than once a week until significant progress has been made toward intended goals.
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I often meet partners, friends, and/or family members of individual clients, but those sessions are considered “ancillary” or “supplemental.” The individual therapy does not become couples therapy or family therapy. Any additional participation in an individual session is always in service to my client.
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No, I do not prescribe medications. I am always open to consulting or collaborating with a prescriber if you have one or need one. I am also always happy to offer referrals should you desire to have an evaluation with a prescriber.
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In my practice, therapy is not indicated for individuals:
under the age of 14
struggling with ongoing and severe self-injurious behavior
experiencing active suicidal ideation
engaging in chronic and severe substance use or abuse
court-mandated to attend psychotherapy
expecting other people to change
perpetrating or victim of ongoing domestic violence
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Please note that I do not accept insurance. I do offer monthly invoices that you may submit to your insurance company for potential out-of-network reimbursement.
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The answer is absolutely yes, but it depends on how you are defining “work.” I recommend each person consider what a successful outcome means to them.
For some people, successful means gaining the ability to develop a safe, trusting relationship with a trained professional who learns to see and support their authentic self.
For others, success means a qualitative, measurable change in some aspect of their life – a change they struggled to make before starting therapy (e.g. quitting a habit, starting a habit, closing a relationship, opening a relationship, leaving a job, etc.).
In my experience, successful therapy helps the client get to know themselves in new ways. When we question what we think we know about ourselves, we awaken to the possibility that we may be more, or different than, we thought.
By opening to ourselves, we access the vulnerability and humility needed to improve our understanding of how and why we relate to others the way we do. We also clarify our needs, and learn to distinguish them from our wants.
In other words, “therapy doesn’t work – you do.” Therapy (and the therapist) can be central to the healing experience, but the individual client really does the work. Therapy is not limited to the 50-minute session; it lives, breathes, and grows in the time between sessions, when you are immersed in your life, your thoughts, your body, and your experiences.
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Many of the people I’ve worked with have enjoyed a significantly expanded sense of self. Clients tend to acquire a better understanding of the content of their thoughts, how these thoughts form, and why they exist. This also applies to feelings and behaviors - it is powerful to discover what causes, maintains, and changes these aspects of your life.
With an improved sense of self comes confidence. When we are confident, we are able to take charge of our lives in ways we felt unable to in the past. We learn to identify our needs in the moment, and gain the mental flexibility needed to creatively fulfill them.
Individual therapy also builds on our strengths. Often, therapy begins with a focus on what does not feel good, on what we are struggling with. But responding to these challenges requires intensive cultivation of our existing capacities – the superpowers we already have. I have found that many people struggle to identify their own strengths, doubting them in the face of adversity or fear. I find great satisfaction in coaching my clients to engage their most helpful, intelligent, intuitive qualities. And it is even more exciting to see them implement this practice on their own.
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Please note that my services are primarily virtual. Since 2020, I have come to appreciate the continued efficacy of online individual therapy. This medium of communication has made the service more accessible to individuals in multiple states, as well as those with busy schedules who benefit from saving time on commuting to and from appointments.
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Absolutely. The only time I would breach confidentiality is if you told me you were going to hurt yourself, someone else, or that a child, elderly, or disabled person was being abused and/or in danger. I am a mandated reporter in all of these circumstances.
let’s talk