When people contact me, they're usually looking for something they haven't found elsewhere. They've tried conventional therapy and found it insufficient—small interventions that don't address the underlying structure of their difficulties. They're tired of being patronized, of having their inner experience trivialized or reduced to symptoms that need managing.
What they want is understanding. They want their experience to make sense, not to be taught coping skills as though they simply haven't learned the right techniques yet. They're looking for a collaborative process where someone takes them seriously.
What Actually Happens in Sessions
There are no rules about what must or can't be discussed. You tell me what's on your mind—whatever feels most pressing. I listen at multiple levels simultaneously: to the content of what you're saying, but also to tone, body language, facial expression. I pay attention to what you leave out: obvious implications you don't draw, questions you don't ask, gaps in your personal history.
I think about how you relate to me. If you're describing someone as distant and unreachable, I consider whether that's also a message about our relationship. I notice my own reactions—emotional, intellectual, visceral—because those reactions contain information about what's happening between us.
At appropriate moments, I offer what I think will help you fill in gaps in your self-understanding. It's a recursive examination of the relational field—we're both inside the process, and the process itself becomes something we can examine together.
The Theoretical Foundation
Traditional psychoanalysis works with a drive-defense model: the assumption is that problems arise because you want something forbidden and won't admit it to yourself. The analyst's job is to confront you with this until you either indulge the desire or give it up.
I work differently. My approach is based on an information processing model. Problems arise not from forbidden desires but from experiences—real events, thoughts, memories—that haven't been fully contextualized. By "contextualized" I mean something basic: being able to name what something is, knowing when and where and with whom it occurred, understanding its place in your life.
Anxiety, in this framework, is fundamentally a fear that a particular experience might turn out to be completely unthinkable—that you won't be able to process it, that it will remain fragmentary and indigestible.
My function is as an adjunct mind that helps you digest your own experience. Like a dialysis machine, except that over time you learn to do this processing without needing me.
What This Work Requires
The core requirement is a willingness to value truth over self-deception. Clients who want to spend their lives running from themselves won't benefit from this work.
That said, the fear of truth is based on a misunderstanding. Knowing the truth about yourself is always objectively less painful than lying to yourself. You never discover something about yourself that feels worse than the way you currently are—that's an artifact of inadequate early relationships, not a feature of self-knowledge itself.
This isn't quick work. It's not about symptom relief or crisis management. If you're looking for coaching or fast fixes, you should probably look elsewhere. I don't do patch-up jobs. If you're hemorrhaging, I make the bleeding stop—I don't just bandage you enough to keep going while you continue losing blood.
Why I Do This
It's the only context I know where you can interact with another person without self-deception, circumlocution, and avoidance of truth. I find those things far more tiring than doing therapy for eight hours straight.
Before You Contact Me
You don't need prerequisites beyond what's on my website: time, money, interest, and ideally a stance of open-minded skepticism. If you've read this and recognize that what you need is understanding rather than management, that's probably enough.