I have been practicing psychotherapy in San Francisco since 2006. Here are the main ingredients in my approach:

1. Deep listening to what you tell me and what your body tells me.  I ask a lot of good questions and make plenty of reflections on what I see and think about your situation. I consider your healing from the perspective of the interconnectedness of mind and body.

2. Empathy and Challenge. We grow when we have the right balance of mirroring and gentle support alternating with appropriate feedback and challenges. We need to be felt and understood in our struggles, and we need help seeing the ways we’re holding ourselves back. I aim to find the right balance and timing of these and solicit your feedback along the way.

3. A commitment to an experiential therapeutic process. More than just talk therapy, I’ll guide you in processing difficult emotions and finding a grounded resourcefulness in your body. I’ll ask you to notice what your experience is in the present as we’re doing therapy, and this will anchor positive emotional changes in your body and increase your general awareness and aliveness.

4. Mindfulness. Much of our suffering comes from judging ourselves. Using tools from cognitive psychology, you will learn how to give your experience attention without judgment. Mindfulness helps you change patterns of thinking and feel less overwhelmed in general. It also helps you make sense of your life through gaining insight into the emotional logic behind your struggles.

My knowledge of attachment theory, neuroscience and the development of the human personality provides a general map to orient me to the process. I know when and how to guide you through experiences that change the negative patterning in your brain. Of course, personal experience doesn’t always fit a map. Your experience takes priority.

All this rests on a strong foundation of warmth, genuineness, and empathy. I have discovered that our natural state of being is one of ease, openness, compassion and wisdom. These qualities become obscured during our necessary adaption to our particular family environment and to a culture that overall values production over sustainable living.

Contact me for a free consultation

Your therapy will be a unique combination, based on your needs, of the approaches described on these and other pages of my site.

I see that psychotherapy works by addressing the emotional/behavioral patterns and relationship styles we learn in childhood that no longer help us as adults. I’m referring to behaviors that cause people to be labeled as insecure, jealous, angry, needy, aloof, anxious, or withdrawn. Psychotherapy also works by meeting the human longing to be seen and understood by a caring person and, perhaps more importantly, by oneself. My intention is to meet your personal experience with empathy and to guide you in an inquiry around your issue that will ultimately lead to healing and transformation.

I also see psychotherapy is an interpersonal mindfulness practice; with my support you are able to pay more attention to your experience. This attention helps you integrate and make sense of your experience, which carries forward the developmental process that wants to unfold within you. My own mindfulness practice trains me to sustain a calm, focused attention and a non-judgmental, curious stance on whatever arises in session. This stance is passively learned, helping you build self-acceptance and self-understanding. As I listen carefully to you, you learn to listen more closely to yourself, which can lead to a discovery of sources of inner guidance and affirmation.