my approach to therapy
Relational. Trauma informed. Unhurried.
Most of what brings people to therapy — anxiety that won't quit, relationships that keep hitting the same wall, a sense of having lost track of themselves somewhere — didn't come out of nowhere. It developed. Usually over a long time, usually in response to something that made a certain way of moving through the world necessary.
My work starts there: not with what's wrong, but with what makes sense. When we can understand a pattern in context — where it came from, what it was protecting, what it cost — it becomes something we can actually work with.
what it’s like to work together
The image I carry into session is that I'm sitting on the same side of the table as you, looking outward at what you see — not across from you, evaluating. My job isn't to hand you a map of where you should go. It's to understand how the world looks from where you're standing, and to be a partner in your process as you decide your next move.
That means your values, your experiences, and your sense of what you need are the actual compass. I'm not here to move you toward my idea of a good life. I'm here to support you as you move toward yours.
In practice, this looks like:
Asking how something feels right now, as you bring it to mind — not just how it felt at the time
Noticing connections and offering them as possibilities, not conclusions
Being comfortable in silence
Trusting you to know what you can handle — and working at a pace that reflects that
Not giving advice, but being willing to share my own reactions when that feels useful
Clients have told me they've been able to go further in our work together than they expected or thought possible — not because I pushed them to go deeper, but because they didn't feel managed. They felt trusted to know what they could handle.
Some problems have solutions. Some don't. I'm not going to pretend otherwise, and I'm not going to rush you toward a resolution that may or may not exist. Part of what therapy can offer is learning to hold our struggles differently, even when they can’t be fixed.
the role of the body & the nervous system
One of the things I've come to understand about trauma — and about a lot of patterns that we feel helpless to change — is that they don't live only in our thoughts. They live in the body. Our nervous system can’t always tell the difference between something terrible and hard that we went through long ago — and the memory of that terrible thing. It means we sometimes feel like something from our past is happening to us again and again.
That's why some things can't be resolved through talking alone. Insight helps, but it often isn't enough on its own.
I work somatically, which means we pay attention to what's happening in your body — not just what you're thinking or remembering. This isn't about technique for its own sake. It's because the body is often where the real information is, and where change actually takes hold.
Somatic work is experiential — meaning some of the work happens right there in the room, in real time, rather than only in reflection. I often use parts work (similar to IFS, or Internal Family Systems) the same way — as a way of connecting with different parts of yourself, especially the ones carrying something difficult, with curiosity rather than judgment.
My work is creative by nature. I don't think of therapy as a purely verbal process, and I'm trained in expressive approaches that can open up territory that conversation alone sometimes can't reach.
If something here resonated and you're wondering whether we might be a good fit, I'd love to hear from you.
for clinicians
My work is organized around a central idea: that most of what brings people to therapy — anxiety, relational ruptures, burnout, a pervasive sense of not quite being themselves — makes more sense when understood as patterns that developed in response to earlier relational and contextual experiences. I work particularly well with clients carrying hidden pain: people whose struggles aren't always visible from the outside and who have often spent years adapting rather than naming what they're moving through.
The clients who tend to find their way to me include first-generation immigrants and intercultural couples navigating the particular complexity of living between two or more worlds; families of adults working through longstanding dynamics that have followed them out of childhood; and people with complex trauma histories for whom the therapeutic relationship itself is part of what needs to be repaired. People who identify as neurodivergent, queer folx, and creatives often find their way into my office as well.
The through-line is the stance: I work from the same side of the table as my clients. My orientation is toward understanding how the world looks from inside a client's own values, meaning-making system, and context — which tends to matter especially for clients whose experience has often been filtered through someone else's lens or through a systemically oppressive lens.
My work is informed by relational cultural theory, systems and cybernetic theory, narrative therapy, collaborative language systems, somatic and experiential approaches, parts work, and expressive arts therapy. I work with adults, in person in Austin and telehealth across Texas.
If you're considering a referral and want to talk through fit, I'm always glad to connect.