You may already know why you respond the way you do.
You may understand your childhood, recognize your relationship patterns, know your triggers, and even be able to name the beliefs you carry because of what you've experienced.
And still, in the moment, something takes over.
You shut down. You become anxious. You overthink. You accommodate. You disconnect. You take care of everyone else. You react in ways you promised yourself you wouldn't.
This doesn't mean you haven't done enough work.
It means that some of what shapes us lives deeper than conscious understanding.
My approach to therapy is designed to meet you there.
Related reading: I Understand Myself. Why Doesn't That Always Change How I Feel?
What Does Depth-Oriented Therapy Mean?
Depth-oriented therapy is less about applying a technique to a problem and more about becoming curious about the whole person experiencing it.
Anxiety, grief, relationship difficulties, overwhelm, or a period of transition may be what brings you to therapy. Our work can also explore what lies beneath those experiences: your history, relationships, internal parts, patterns of protection, sense of identity, and the deeper questions emerging in your life.
For women who already have a great deal of self-awareness, therapy can become a place to move beyond intellectual understanding and into a more lived, embodied experience of change.
How Is Depth-Oriented Therapy Different?
Many forms of therapy can help you develop coping strategies, change unhelpful thoughts, or respond differently to difficult situations. These tools can be valuable, and there are times when symptom relief is exactly what is needed.
Depth-oriented therapy also asks us to look underneath the symptom.
Rather than seeing anxiety, overwhelm, perfectionism, relationship difficulties, or emotional disconnection only as problems to solve, we become curious about how they developed, what continues to activate them, and what they may be expressing about your inner life.
This means we may work with what is happening now while also exploring earlier experiences, relationship patterns, internal conflicts, protective strategies, emotions, the body, and the meanings you have made from what you have lived through.
The goal is not endless exploration of the past.
It is greater freedom in the present.
So.. We Begin With Curiosity…
I don't see symptoms simply as problems to eliminate.
Anxiety, perfectionism, people-pleasing, emotional withdrawal, hyper-independence, overfunctioning, or the need to stay in control often developed for a reason.
At some point, they may have helped you feel safe, connected, accepted, or able to manage experiences that felt overwhelming.
Rather than asking only:
How do we make this stop?
I am often interested in another question:
What is this trying to protect?
That shift, from judgment to curiosity, can change the way we relate to ourselves.
Instead of fighting the parts of you that seem anxious, angry, avoidant, needy, controlling, or afraid, we begin to understand them.
And when something no longer has to work so hard to protect you, change becomes possible.
Therapy That Works on More Than One Level
Healing doesn't always happen through talking alone.
Depending on what brings you to therapy and what feels right for you, our work may move between several layers of experience.
Understanding Your Story
We explore the relationships, experiences, family dynamics, beliefs, and patterns that have shaped the way you experience yourself and others.
Understanding matters.
But it is often the beginning of the work rather than the end.
Healing What the Past Still Holds
Sometimes the past isn't simply something we remember.
Its imprint can continue to appear in the present — in relationships, emotional reactions, beliefs about ourselves, or the body's response to situations that feel familiar.
When appropriate, I incorporate trauma-focused approaches such as EMDR and Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) to help process experiences that may not have fully resolved through insight or conversation alone.
We don't need to force our way into painful experiences.
Trauma work should happen with care, preparation, and respect for your pace.
Working With the Parts of You
Through an Internal Family Systems-informed perspective, we may become curious about the different parts of you that appear in particular situations.
The part that takes care of everyone.
The part that worries.
The part that needs to get everything right.
The part that wants to disappear.
The part that is angry.
The part that learned not to need anyone.
Instead of trying to get rid of these parts, we explore what they have been carrying and what they may still believe they need to protect you from.
Learning to Stay Present With Yourself
Mindfulness is woven throughout much of my work, but not as another thing you need to become "good at."
At its simplest, mindfulness is learning to notice what is happening within you without immediately judging it, fixing it, or running from it.
Over time, this can create something incredibly important:
space between what you feel and what you do next.
That space gives you more choice.
The Body Is Part of the Conversation
Our experiences aren't stored only as stories.
Sometimes we know we're safe and our body remains tense.
We know a relationship is different and still brace for rejection.
We know we don't have to please everyone and still feel uncomfortable saying no.
This is why I pay attention not only to what you think, but also to what you notice emotionally and physically.
Breath, sensation, tension, emotion, impulses, and nervous-system responses can all offer information about what is happening beneath the surface.
This doesn't mean every sensation needs to be analyzed or that therapy requires you to focus on your body. It means we recognize that emotional experience can show up in more than thoughts alone.
For example, we might notice what happens inside when you imagine setting a boundary, disappointing someone, asking for what you need, receiving care, or allowing yourself to slow down.
These moments can help us understand patterns that are difficult to reach through thinking alone — and gradually create opportunities to experience and respond to them differently.
You don't need to be particularly connected to your body or experienced with mindfulness to do this work.
We begin wherever you are.
And Sometimes Healing Opens a Larger Question
There is often a point in therapy when something interesting happens.
The original symptoms may become quieter. You understand yourself differently. Old patterns begin to loosen.
And another question emerges:
If I am no longer organizing my life around survival, fear, obligation, or who I thought I needed to be but how do I actually want to live?
This is where my work often expands beyond symptom relief into questions of identity, meaning, purpose, values, and connection.
For many women, these questions become especially alive during periods of transition.
Midlife, perimenopause, changing relationships, children growing up, shifts in career or family roles, or simply realizing that the life that once fit no longer feels quite the same can bring unexpected anxiety, grief, restlessness, or disconnection.
These experiences can also become an invitation to listen more deeply to what is changing within you and to ask
not only “What is happening to me?” but “Who am I becoming now?”
I simply believe that psychological healing can sometimes open the door to
a deeper relationship with yourself and with the life you want to create.
An Integrative Approach
There is no single modality that can capture the complexity of a human being.
I draw from several therapeutic approaches, choosing what is most appropriate for the person in front of me rather than asking you to fit into a particular method. These approaches give us different ways of understanding and working with your experience, but the modality is never the goal.
You are at the center of the work.
Internal Family Systems (IFS)
IFS helps us understand the different parts of ourselves — including those that protect, worry, overfunction, withdraw, or carry old wounds. Rather than trying to eliminate these parts, we approach them with curiosity and compassion, creating space for greater understanding and inner connection.
Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing (EMDR)
EMDR can help process experiences that continue to feel unresolved or remain emotionally activating in the present. It allows us to work beyond insight alone, helping painful experiences become less powerful in shaping how you feel and respond today.
Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT / Tapping)
EFT combines focused attention with gentle tapping on acupressure points. It can be incorporated into therapy to support emotional regulation and help us work with distressing emotions, beliefs, and experiences.
Mindfulness-Based Therapy
Mindfulness is woven throughout much of my work as a way of becoming more aware of thoughts, emotions, sensations, and patterns without immediately judging or reacting to them. Over time, this awareness can create more space for choice and a different relationship with ourselves.
Attachment & Family Systems
These perspectives help us understand how early relationships, family dynamics, and experiences of connection continue to influence how we relate to ourselves and others. Recognizing these patterns can open the possibility of creating new ways of relating.
Energy Psychology & Transpersonal Psychotherapy
For clients who are interested, these approaches can make room for dimensions of experience that may extend beyond traditional talk therapy including the mind-body connection, intuition, spirituality, meaning, and purpose.
The modality is never the goal.
The goal is helping you understand yourself more deeply, heal what continues to shape your present, and experience greater freedom to live as yourself.
What Might a Session Look Like?
There is no predetermined formula for our sessions.
We usually begin with what feels most present for you: something that happened during the week, an emotion you can't quite shake, a relationship interaction, a recurring thought or pattern, a memory, a physical response, or simply the sense that something feels different.
Sometimes we talk and reflect.
Sometimes I may invite you to slow down and notice what is happening underneath the story: an emotion, a belief, a protective part of you, or something you notice in your body.
At other times, we may work more intentionally with a particular experience using EMDR, EFT, mindfulness, or another approach when it feels clinically appropriate and you are comfortable doing so.
You will not be expected to arrive knowing what you need to work on.
Part of therapy is learning to listen more closely to what is asking for your attention.
Frequently Asked Questions About My Approach
-
Depth-oriented psychotherapy looks beyond symptoms alone to explore the emotional, relational, and psychological patterns underneath them. Rather than asking only, “How can I stop feeling this way?” we may also become curious about why a particular response developed, what continues to activate it, and what it may be communicating.
The goal is not simply greater insight, but greater freedom in how you experience yourself, your relationships, and your life.
-
Traditional talk therapy can mean many different things. In depth-oriented work, we may talk and reflect, but we also pay attention to patterns that emerge beneath the story — emotions, relationship dynamics, protective responses, beliefs, memories, and experiences in the body.
This can be especially helpful when you understand something intellectually but continue to experience the same emotional reaction or recurring pattern.goes here
-
Depth-oriented therapy may be a good fit if you are interested not only in feeling better, but in understanding yourself more deeply.
You may find yourself repeating relationship patterns, experiencing anxiety or overwhelm that doesn't fully make sense, questioning who you are becoming, or noticing that strategies that once helped you cope no longer seem to work.
You don't need to know exactly what is wrong or what you want to change before beginning. Curiosity about yourself — even if it begins simply with the feeling that something in your life needs attention — is enough.
-
No. Therapy does not require revisiting your childhood simply for the sake of exploring the past.
We may become curious about earlier experiences when they help us understand something happening in your life now — such as a relationship pattern, fear, belief, or emotional response. The focus remains on helping you have more choice and freedom in the present.
-
This is very common. Insight is important, but understanding where a pattern came from does not always change the emotional or physical response connected to it.
Our work may therefore go beyond talking about the pattern to exploring how it is held emotionally, relationally, and sometimes in the body's learned responses. Approaches such as IFS-informed therapy, EMDR, EFT, mindfulness, and attachment-focused work may help us access aspects of experience that insight alone does not always reach.
-
No. I don't follow a single protocol or use one method with every person.
My approach is integrative, which means I draw from different therapeutic perspectives depending on what you are experiencing and what feels appropriate for you. Some sessions may involve conversation and reflection; others may include EMDR, EFT, mindfulness, parts work, or attention to what you notice in your body.
The method serves the therapy — not the other way around.
-
Not at all.
For some people, questions of meaning, spirituality, identity, or purpose naturally become part of therapy. For others, they don't. There is no particular belief system you need to hold, and spirituality never needs to be part of our work unless it is meaningful to you.
Therapy is shaped around your experience, your values, and what matters to you.
-
There is no predetermined timeline. Some people come to therapy to work through a particular transition or difficulty, while others choose longer-term therapy because they want to explore deeper patterns, relationships, identity, or personal growth.
We can talk together about what you are hoping for and periodically revisit whether the work continues to feel meaningful and useful. Therapy does not need to continue longer than it is serving you.
-
Absolutely. Depth-oriented therapy doesn't mean that every experience needs to be traced back to its origins.
There may be times when what you need most is support with something happening right now, a relationship difficulty, an important decision, anxiety, grief, a life transition, or simply getting through a particularly demanding period.
We can stay with the present when that is what needs attention. When deeper patterns become relevant, we can explore them together without losing sight of the life you are actually living now.