People I work with often come to therapy because they’re depressed, dominated by anxiety, or acting in destructive ways that bewilder them. They talk about feeling “stuck” in life, trapped in cycles of obsessive thinking, self sabotage, or repeated relationship problems.

Edna St. Vincent Millay remarked, “It is not true that life is one damn thing after another — it's one damn thing over and over.” Truly, it doesn’t have to be that way!

We may do great work together if:

• You want to work through blocks, barriers, and/or problematic behaviors so you can do what matters most to you with more clarity, authenticity and flexibility.

• You want to go beyond the superficial and intellectual and toward what is true but has been avoided, right here and now. Perhaps you have a sense that what we hide from ourselves ends up running the show outside our awareness.

• Traditional, supportive talk therapy hasn’t been effective, you are drawn to work that challenges you in new ways, or you and your current therapist have reached an impasse and you need something different, temporarily, in order to move forward with them.

• You need to work with someone who can keep up with your intensity, including feelings that come up in/about the therapy relationship and process.

Something I often hear from people I work with is that in past therapy they talked a lot about their thoughts related to their feelings and patterns, but in this therapy they could see and work with them directly in the here-and-now.

I offer a nontraditional therapy format that has the potential to initiate deep, lasting change. I am trained in Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP) which is a flexible model we can use to bring forth unconscious parts of ourselves and work through inner (often unconscious) conflicts.

This approach is experiential, intensive, time-limited, and psychodynamic.

Experiential means working in the here-and-now with feelings, bodily sensations, avoidance habits, and relational patterns. The focus is on one’s holistic experience: we work at the level of experience, rather than solely thoughts about it. This is sort of like the difference between talking about a slice of cake and actually eating it.

Intensive means that the work is calibrated, moment-to-moment, to one’s current level of capacity. This can be challenging and anxiety provoking, but should not be overwhelming. Working at an appropriate level of intensity allows old, life-limiting patterns to come into view and be disrupted, and for new learning to take place at a deep level.

Time limited means the work is not totally open ended. After an initial “trial" session to determine together if this kind of work is a good fit, we can mutually commit to a set number of therapy hours (usually 16). This time limit, in my experience, encourages and liberates people to work directly and earnestly toward what they know, at least on some level, needs to be worked through. Perhaps counterintuitively, the short term aspect of the work often increases rather than limits the depth that is possible.

Psychodynamic refers to a major branch of therapy that shines awareness on how our early attachment experiences influence our current lives. This often includes the ways these patterns arise in the therapy relationship as an important area of focus.

If time limited, high intensity work is not appropriate, we may decide to engage in more open ended work aimed at building capacity for the anxiety and discomfort that may accompany the emotional closeness and self-expression invited by therapy (and life!).

The typical process is:

1. A two-hour “trial” session where we can experience together whether this therapy feels like a good fit.

2. Brief video call a few days later to discuss a treatment plan and make an agreement. Committing to see the process through can greatly energize the work, but of course you are free to end treatment at any time.

3. Sixteen hours of intensive, experiential therapy. Session length and frequency vary depending on circumstance. Sessions are usually between one and two hours occurring on a weekly basis. Other formats are possible as indicated or needed (for example, meeting a few days in a row if you’re traveling from a distance, or meeting bi-weekly or monthly to make the process more affordable).

4. After the block of therapy ends, a one-hour check-in and integration session is scheduled for about one month later. An optional two- or three-month follow up may also be appropriate.

My fee for time-limited therapy is $115 per hour (~$2,100 total for the format described above).

For open-ended work, my fee is $125 per hour.

What we can reasonably hope for in our work is an experience that disrupts your internal status quo. This can be powerful, and it can also be somewhat disorienting. Like many transformative experiences, important work comes afterwards, as we make meaning of our experiences and integrate change into our selves, relationships, and lives.

Neuroscience has made great advances in understanding how change occurs in the brain. Much change happens through effortfully adopting new habits: to change, we must do things differently enough times to deepen a new neural pathway, leading to new automatic behavior.

There is also exciting science showing the power of intense experiences— psychedelics, spiritual experiences, even traumas— that lead to rapid, profound changes in the brain. I can make no promises about what will or will not happen in our work together. The aim, though, is toward the kind of experiences that catalyze new possibilities. I will support integration, but it will be up to you, with the supports you bring in, to capitalize on these experiences so that they become something real and meaningful in your life, rather than just a memory.