Psychotherapy for thoughtful, driven people who want to understand themselves more deeply
Depth-oriented psychotherapy for anxiety, depression, relationships,
creativity, and the emotional challenges of work and life.
In-person in Oakland and San Rafael, with online therapy throughout California.
Sometimes understanding the problem isn’t enough
Many of the people I work with are capable, thoughtful, and psychologically
minded. They may understand quite a lot about themselves already, yet still
find themselves caught in patterns they cannot simply think their way out of.
Therapy can provide a different kind of understanding—one that develops
through paying close attention to emotional patterns, relationships,
expectations, and conflicts that shape how you experience yourself and other people.
Two ways I work
Psychotherapy
I work primarily with adults dealing with anxiety,
relationship difficulties, questions of identity or meaning,
creative struggles, and periods of feeling dissatisfied,
disconnected, or stuck.
My approach is depth-oriented and informed by psychodynamic and
psychoanalytic thinking, getting to the root of problems while remaining flexible, collaborative,
and responsive to the individual person.
Executive Coaching
I also work with executives, founders, professionals, and other leaders
whose work involves difficult decisions, relationships, organizational
dynamics, pressure, or unusually complex interpersonal situations.
Coaching draws on psychological understanding without turning the work
into psychotherapy. The focus remains on leadership, decision-making,
relationships, and effectiveness.
A deeper kind of therapy
Symptoms matter. Anxiety, depression, conflict, avoidance, dissatisfaction,
and problems in relationships can make life genuinely painful. But symptoms
often also reflect something deeper: ways of relating, protecting yourself,
managing emotion, or understanding other people that developed for
understandable reasons and have become limiting.
Rather than applying the same technique to everyone, I try to understand
how your particular mind works—what you notice, what you avoid, what you
expect from other people, and what repeatedly gets in the way of living
the life you actually want.
Practical without being superficial
Depth-oriented therapy does not mean spending every session talking about
childhood or endlessly analyzing the past. Much of the work focuses on
what is happening right now: relationships, work, decisions, emotions,
ambitions, disappointments, and the ways familiar patterns appear in everyday life.
Sometimes the work is reflective. Sometimes it is quite practical.
Usually it is both.
The goal is not simply to feel less anxious or depressed, but to become
freer to live, relate, work, and make choices in ways that feel more genuinely your own.
Who I Often Work With
- People who worry, overthink, or have difficulty quieting their minds
- People who feel depressed, emotionally flat, or disconnected from themselves
- Successful or capable people who still feel dissatisfied or stuck
- People struggling with intimacy, relationships, or recurring interpersonal patterns
- People facing transitions involving work, identity, creativity, relationships, or meaning
- People who understand their problems intellectually but have difficulty actually changing them
Psychodynamic Therapy in Oakland & San Rafael
Psychodynamic therapy looks beneath immediate symptoms to understand the
emotional patterns and relationships that keep problems going.
Anxiety, depression, conflict, avoidance, and dissatisfaction often become
more understandable when we explore the experiences and expectations beneath them.
Greater understanding can create more flexibility—more choice in relationships,
more emotional freedom, and less need to respond automatically in familiar ways.
My work is informed by psychoanalytic thinking, but therapy is collaborative,
practical, and adapted to the individual rather than based on a fixed formula.
What Working With Me Is Like
I am active and engaged rather than sitting silently and expecting you
to do all of the talking. I listen closely, ask questions, offer observations,
and try to help us notice patterns that might otherwise remain invisible.
Different people need different things at different times, so the work
should evolve as our understanding of you becomes deeper.
I am a licensed clinical psychologist with experience across private practice,
hospitals, clinics, psychoanalytic settings, organizational consulting,
and executive coaching.
Psychotherapy in Oakland & San Rafael
I offer in-person psychotherapy from offices in Oakland and San Rafael,
as well as telehealth for clients throughout California.
Oakland
Depth-oriented psychotherapy for adults in Oakland and the East Bay.
San Rafael
Psychotherapy for adults in San Rafael, Marin County,
and surrounding communities.