WORKING WITH ME
Some things worth knowing before we start.
When you come in, you have my full attention. For the time we’re together, what you bring is what matters. We don’t get many chances to be genuinely focused on our own needs. Choosing therapy is one of them, and I don’t take it lightly.
I’m not the therapist who sits with a notebook nodding and saying Mmmhmm (although I do do that occasionally). Sessions tend to be engaging and sometimes fun and I’ll bring prompts, exercises, and ideas when they’re useful. Laughter, directness, metaphor, and pop culture all have a place. If a movie, a meme, or something you read sparked something, bring it in. I’m interested in the full picture of who you are, including the weird parts.
That said, the work is yours to initiate and carry forward. I can offer direction, but I can’t want it more than you do. And most of what actually changes happens between sessions in your real life, when you take what we’ve worked on and try it out.
It’s also okay to sit quietly. Someone once told me that just because it’s quiet doesn’t mean nothing is happening. Something is always happening.
On pace
The first four to six weeks tend to be slower. That’s deliberate. Before anything useful can happen, there needs to be enough safety in the room to say things you may not have said before. Building that takes a little time, and I’d rather go slowly and actually get there. One thing I invite clients to practice early: not apologizing for what they’ve just said, and not prefacing what they’re about to say. No caveats, no minimizing. In everyday life that instinct makes sense. Here, you don’t have to.
We might go slower than feels comfortable. That’s often a sign we’re in the right place. A lot of the instinct in daily life is to move quickly toward solutions or apologies and to get out of discomfort as fast as possible. Part of the work is building the capacity to sit in it instead. That capacity does grow with practice, but not if we keep outrunning it.
On technology
I work in person, and I have a general preference for (and encourage my clients to prioritize) face-to-face contact. For couples especially I urge folks to use text and chat for logistics like scheduling, coordinating, and other practical things. Not for conversations that matter. Text is too easily misread and we often fill in tone, expression, and intent with our own assumptions rather than what the other person actually means. That gap is such a reliable source of friction that it’s worth keeping in mind.
On the mess
The complicated parts of your inner life are welcome here. Bring all your contradictions and the feelings you’ve been managing by not quite looking at them. It’s not too much.
One frame I find useful is that whatever disturbance you’re experiencing tends to live inside you, not in the other person. A situation can bring something up, or a person can trigger something, but the feeling belongs to you, which means it’s something you can work with. That idea tends to become more concrete over time.
The messy and the beautiful can coexist. Accepting where you are right now and working toward something different aren’t opposites. Sometimes the most useful approach isn’t to fix anything, it’s to get better at being with what’s there.
Ready to find out if we might be a good fit?