PSYCHODYNAMIC PSYCHOTHERAPY
Approach
My approach is grounded in psychodynamic psychotherapy: a depth-oriented, relational way of working that is interested not only in what is difficult now, but in the experiences, relationships, patterns, and contexts that have shaped you over time.
Together, we’ll be curious about how you came to understand yourself and others; the patterns and adaptations that developed along the way; what happens in your relationships, work, and inner life; and what may be outside your awareness or difficult to put into words. We’ll also pay attention to the dynamics, systems, and circumstances you are navigating now—and, when useful, to what emerges between us in therapy.
The aim is not insight for its own sake. Coming to understand how your emotional world is organized and what’s going on underneath your experiences can create room for something different: more freedom and flexibility in how you respond, a stronger and more integrated sense of self, greater capacity for connection, and more creativity and possibility in how you live, work, and play.
Understanding People and Change
My work is psychodynamic at its foundation and informed by several complementary ways of understanding people and change. Some of these come from my work as a researcher and some from my clinical training:
People in systems.We are born into a particular time and set of relationships, and we are shaped —and in turn, shape — the relationships, systems, and institutions we find ourselves navigating, whether we mean for that to happen or not. Our caregivers as well as broader historical or societal ideas, norms, pressures, expectations, resources, and consequences can have significant impacts not only on how we understand what it means to live a “good life” or be a “good person,” but also how we think about ourselves in relation to those ideals as we’ve come to know, experience and internalize them. Where these cause distress or difficulty or ambivalence, it can be helpful to be curious about them in therapy as a path toward greater insight, healing, freedom, and personal agency.
The Relationship Matters. Meta-analyses have shown that there are some common factors that are effective across therapeutic approaches. They include a strong alliance in the therapeutic relationship; shared agreement about the aims of therapy; warmth, connection and empathy; engagement in the collaborative, purposeful work of therapy; and a hopeful and productive space to explore what matters most. For me, these form a basis for developing a working therapeutic relationship and creating a productive therapeutic environment.
Experience Creates Movement. Language and meaningful talk in the context of supportive relationship is central to productive therapy. So, too, is experience both in and out of the therapy room, and sometimes a person needs to take some action to create the possibility of a meaningful experience that will shift things. This need not be seismic in order to be enormously consequential. Often, it is the very smallest next thing you can imagine to try (and likely smaller still than that) that can create just enough wiggle room and just enough efficacy and desire to help you to try the next thing. And the next thing to try comes into view as you have tried —and experienced yourself trying — the first thing and you see how it goes.
Depth, Meaning, Mind, and Experience
Within a psychodynamic framework, I also draw from existential therapy, attachment theory, interpersonal neurobiology, and EMDR when appropriate.
Psychodynamic Psychotherapy
Psychodynamic psychotherapy is first of all relational and works to help you understand the story of your life, of your relationships, of your suffering — including how your past experiences, relationships, and internalized narratives and patterns shape the ways you think, feel, and relate today. This often involves slowing things down and exploring ways of making meaning, of protecting yourself, of avoiding that may be habitual and automatic but out of your current awareness.
Where there are patterns that make it difficult to live, work, connect, and play, we’ll work to create some visibility and engage in a kind of inquiry together about them. Of course, these patterns may show up in the therapy room, too, and as they do, this can open opportunities for the two of us to observe what’s happening between us and to consider not only what’s going on but also what might this mean, what might you try differently, and what space might our relationship open up in you and in your other relationships.
Existential Therapy
Existential therapy creates space to explore questions about identity, purpose, freedom, choice, responsibility, loss, death, and what it means to live a meaningful life. Sometimes the anxieties people feel are connected to experiences that are baked into what it means to be human:
to bear the weight of the choices we make and how they land,
to live with constraints we did not choose and in systems we did not make,
to make meaning for ourselves that is not ready-made or apparent and also sufficient to our times and our sense of self, and
to know that anxiety, pain, suffering, and death are ever-present parts of what it is to be alive
This work is especially helpful during times of transition, uncertainty, or when something feels “off” but hard to name.
Interpersonal Neurobiology
EMDR is an evidence-based experiential therapy developed to help people re-process and integrate traumatic memories. Image, sensation, language, emotions are all parts of memory. Some memories are encoded explicitly and can be recalled. Others are encoded implicitly or may have once been explicit (i.e., with images, language, sensations) but have sense been repressed. Through bilateral stimulation (such as eye movements or tapping), EMDR hones in on touchstone wounds – it helps the mind and embodied brain reprocess distressing events that were previously stuck or frozen in the nervous system. This can lead to rapid symptom relief, a decrease in emotional reactivity, and a greater sense of internal coherence.
Interpersonal Neurobiology, attachment theory, and affective neuroscience research shows us that our embodied brains are wired for connection with ourselves, with others, with the world around us. From infancy onward, our emotional regulation, self-concept, and even brain development are shaped through our relationships – especially early ones. These experiences leave neural imprints that start to shape how we see ourselves and the world. Research findings also confirm neuroplasticity and show that we can rewire how we relate to ourselves and others through reprocessing memories, having other emotional experiences, integrating our identity and narratives about our lives, and integrating our mind and our embodied brain.
“The past influences everything and dictates nothing.”
-Adam Phillips
Getting started
If this approach sounds like it could be a good fit for you, reach out for a free consultation.