Individual Psychotherapy

What is Psychotherapy?

Psychotherapy offers a dedicated space to slow down and examine the thoughts, emotions, and relational patterns that shape how you experience yourself, others and the world around you. Rather than providing a space for advice-giving, psychotherapy offers a collaborative process of looking more carefully at what is driving your difficulties, how those drivers emerged, and what has kept them in place. Achieving insights through psychotherapy can help individuals respond differently to their problems rather than simply get better at enduring them.

People come to therapy for many different reasons. Some arrive with a specific concern. Others arrive with the belief that something feels persistently off but do not yet have a clear picture of their problems. These are all reasonable places to start.

What Brings People to Therapy

Common areas of focus include:

• Anxiety and persistent worry: Thoughts that won't settle, a sense of constantly being on alert, or difficulty relaxing even when things appear to be going well.

• Depression and low mood: Feelings of emptiness, withdrawal, or a loss of interest in things that once felt meaningful.

• Grief and loss: The pain of losing someone or something significant that lingers longer than expected, or surfaces in ways that feel confusing and hard to make sense of.

• Trauma and its lasting effects: Past experiences that continue to show up as anxiety, emotional reactivity, numbness, or difficulty trusting others.

• Obsessive and ruminative thinking: Becoming caught in cycles of unwanted thoughts and replaying scenarios or decisions in ways that make it hard to stay present.

• Relational difficulties: Recurring patterns in relationships with partners, family, or colleagues that create friction or leave one feeling misunderstood or unsatisfied.

My Approach to Psychotherapy

My approach is psychodynamic, which means that our work begins with looking to understand what is driving one’s difficulties rather than with a predetermined set of techniques, exercises or coping strategies. We will pay close attention to recurring themes, emotional drivers, and the ways past experiences continue to shape present ones. Sessions are not primarily guided by homework assignments or skills-based training, though such elements can come up naturally as the work unfolds.

A psychodynamic approach works well for people who are curious about themselves and are willing to engage in open, exploratory conversation. To learn more about how psychotherapy came to be, you can read my article on the origins of the talking cure.

“The therapist's job is to do everything in her power not just to promote self-understanding but to encourage experimentation.”

— Jeffrey A. Kottler