My Approach to Psychotherapy

At the heart of my work as a therapist I help people learn the remarkable ability they have to make positive change for themselves.

So often when we feel sad, hurt, confused, or lost we forget that change is possible. A part of us becomes convinced that there is no way out of the heavy, numb or anxious feelings we carry inside. We judge and criticize our thoughts and actions. We may push away friends and family. And we can lose the ability to see ourselves as vibrant, caring, flexible and creative beings.

With care, skill, playfulness and heartfelt attention I bring a new perspective to your specific situation. As a psychotherapist I get interested with you about how to respond to your inner conversations, and outer world interactions, in ways that create more balance, love and happiness in your life, instead of creating more stress. When we feel safe and seen for who we are, with all of our spirit and foibles, we can access our ability to change in healthy ways. Working on our own psychological complexity in therapy allows us to accept — and over time have compassion for — the psychological complexity of others.

When we realize that we are not stuck in any one way of being, we become curious, passionate, kind, and caring with ourselves and others. This informs my approach as a psychotherapist. When you have the direct experience of creating positive change in your life, and over time learn you are skilled at creating long lasting change, you can meet life's challenges from an internal place of security, strength and competence.

As a psychotherapist I work with you to break negative emotional cycles and support you to open up to fresh information about yourself, the world and your options for relating to both. My intention as a psychotherapist is to help you engage in your life, with your family and community in a fulfilling and vital way long after therapy is completed.

An Integrative, Contemplative Approach

In my work with adults and couples, I offer an approach that integrates psychodynamic therapy, parts work, somatic-based trauma therapy, contemplative practices and expressive arts. To create long lasting healthy change, tending to our somatic (body) reactions, as well as our mental and emotional responses, can help us heal more fully. The body and the mind each have their specific ways of reacting to stress and trauma. And both play an important role in how we are able to move through distress towards self-regulation and healing. Investigating both in session can connect you to your fullest potential for positive change. Depending on your particular needs I may use a combination of therapeutic approaches including: psychodynamic, somatic, parts work, Jungian, humanistic, contemplative psychology and cognitive behavioral.

Contemplative Psychotherapy

At the foundation of my work is contemplative psychotherapy — an approach that brings the wisdom of Buddhist psychology into the practice of contemporary psychotherapy. Contemplative psychotherapy is not about teaching meditation or asking you to adopt any particular belief system. It is about the quality of attention and presence that I bring to our work together, and the understanding that human beings have an innate capacity for self-awareness, compassion, and healing that can be accessed when the right conditions are present.

Buddhist psychology offers a nuanced understanding of how the mind creates suffering — through habitual patterns of reactivity, avoidance, and grasping — and how we can develop a wiser, more compassionate relationship with our experience. In therapy, this translates into a way of working that emphasizes direct experience, curiosity over judgment, and spaciousness over urgency. Rather than rushing to fix, we learn to slow down and stay with what is arising, trusting that clarity and insight will emerge from paying attention to your inner experience.

I serve as core faculty at the Nalanda Institute for Contemplative Science, where I direct the Contemplative-Based Resilience Training (CBRT) program, and I am co-editor of Advances in Contemplative Psychotherapy (Routledge, 2023). This ongoing engagement with the intersection of contemplative practice and clinical work deeply informs how I sit with clients.

Somatic Therapy and the Body in Healing

Somatic therapy — working with the body's felt experience as a pathway to healing — is central to my approach. Our bodies carry the imprint of everything we have experienced, especially those experiences that were too overwhelming to process. Childhood trauma, relational wounding, grief, and chronic stress all leave traces in the body — as tension, numbness, hypervigilance, or a persistent sense of unsafety that no amount of talking seems to resolve.

In session, I may invite you to bring awareness to physical sensations — the tightness in your throat when you talk about a certain relationship, the heaviness in your chest that accompanies sadness, the restlessness that arises when we approach vulnerable material. Learning to notice, stay with, and gently explore these sensations opens a doorway to healing that is deeper and more lasting than cognitive understanding alone. Somatic awareness is especially important when working with trauma, where deep healing requires leaning into how the body continues to carry overwhelming experiences. Another example is how helpful somatic awareness is in treating codependency where patterns of overgiving and self-abandonment are often held as deeply in the body as they are mentally and emotionally. In my work with perimenopause, where the body is undergoing profound change, it is critical to be able to meet our felt experience with curiosity to reduce our reactivity to all the changes.

Parts Work

Most of us do not experience ourselves as a single, unified self — we experience inner conflict. There is a part of us that wants to open up and a part that wants to protect. A part that longs for intimacy and a part that is terrified of being hurt. A part that knows it is time to change and a part that clings to what is familiar. Parts work is a therapeutic approach that honors this multiplicity rather than trying to override it. In session, we get to know the different parts of your inner world — the protective parts that have been running the show, the wounded parts that have been exiled from awareness, and the wiser, more grounded self that can hold them all with compassion. When we relate to our parts with curiosity instead of judgment, something remarkable happens: the parts that have been most rigid — the inner critic, the people pleaser, the anxious controller — begin to soften, because they finally feel seen. Parts work is especially transformative for clients working with codependency, where the caretaking part has often overtaken everything else, and for those healing from childhood trauma, where young, wounded parts may still be shaping adult decisions from the shadows.

Attachment and Relational Approaches

Much of the suffering that brings people to therapy is relational in nature — difficulty trusting, fear of vulnerability, patterns of pursuing or withdrawing in relationships, a deep loneliness even when surrounded by people. Attachment theory helps us understand how our earliest relationships shape the way we experience closeness, safety, and connection throughout our lives.

In therapy, I pay close attention to the relational dynamics between us — not only what you tell me about your relationships, but how you relate to me in the room. This is often where the most important material lives. The therapeutic relationship itself becomes a space where new experiences of trust, honesty, and secure connection can take root and gradually reshape the patterns that have kept you stuck.

Dream Tending and Active Imagination

Dreams offer a direct and unfiltered window into the deeper layers of the psyche — the parts of ourselves that are not easily accessed through ordinary conversation. In my work, I draw on the Jungian tradition of dream tending, which treats dreams not as puzzles to be decoded but as living images that carry their own intelligence and invitation. Rather than imposing fixed interpretations, we approach your dreams with curiosity and respect, allowing the images to speak on their own terms. I may suggest we use active imagination during seesion— a practice developed by Jung in which we enter into conscious dialogue with the figures, landscapes, and energies that appear in our dreams and inner life. Through active imagination, a dream image that might otherwise fade by morning becomes a doorway into parts of yourself that are asking to be known. This process can be especially powerful for clients navigating grief, life transitions, or the deep psycho-spiritual shifts of perimenopause, where dreams often become unusually vivid and revealing.

Expressive Arts and Creative Process

There are many ways we can work together in a therapy session. Depending on your needs and sensitivities, I may suggest we investigate your thoughts and feelings by drawing, writing, working with clay, and painting. I may make some suggestions as to possible tools we can use, but it is always up to you to decide what feels right in the moment.

Expressive arts are not about artistic skill — they are about accessing parts of your experience that words alone may not reach. A shape made in clay or a spontaneous drawing can sometimes reveal what is happening beneath the surface more directly than conversation. For clients working through grief, trauma, or the disorientation of major life transitions, creative expression can be a powerful way to stay connected to your inner world when language feels insufficient.

Welcoming Diversity

I welcome working with diversity in its many forms as I was brought up in an environment influenced by two different cultures and religious backgrounds. Respecting different perspectives and traditions is an important part of my approach to individual and couples therapy.

I can be reached at 415.721.3355 or by email to discuss how my San Francisco psychotherapy practice can meet your specific needs. I see clients via telehealth throughout California and in my San Francisco office in Noe Valley at 4155 24th Street, San Francisco, CA 94114.

To learn more about my thoughts and approach to psychotherapy, you can read the articles on my psychotherapy blog.