Individual therapy for anxiety, relationships, and meaning making

In Session

How we work together

James' photo of Lake Union from Gasworks at sunset.

Therapy is a chance to view your life in new ways. It’s where we can collaborate to make sense of past meaningful experiences, explore what your emotions are truly saying, and bring curiosity into some of life’s biggest questions.

Therapy is not a place of shoulds. It's where you can be “you.” It’s where growth, healing, and change are possible, as we work to understand reality, not control it.

When we greet life from a place of understanding and intention, we can live in accordance with our values, and choose how we want to react to whatever life throws at us. Sometimes therapy can feel cathartic and inspiring, other times emotional and challenging. Though it may not always be easy, we will always move towards what matters to you most.

Understanding Patterns

A sunset over a body of water with a bridge in the distance. The sky has clouds with hints of pink and orange. There are boats docked at the shore in front of the water.

Therapy is not about living in the past. It’s about making sense of it. After all, our pasts are where we first learned how to be in the world. Where we learned how to be with others and solve conflict. It’s where we learned who we are as a person. And if we want to live with intentionality, lessons from our past can become our best teacher.

Therapy is a chance to honor your past. Not skip over it. To validate your life’s experiences. Not make them invisible. It’s a place to say that what you’ve been through matters. And though we may not be able to change the past, we can continue to grow from the wisdom it provides us, heal from the wounds that never got a chance to heal, and change the patterns we’ve carried that no longer serve us. When you think of where you want to go next in life, remembering where you’ve been is a natural first step.

Building Practical Skills

Sometimes we need to learn to become more flexible. Other times we need firmer boundaries. Our goal isn’t to find the “best way” to do something, but rather to respond in ways that make sense to you in the long term. After all, what we feel like doing in an emotional moment might not actually match what we actually want, and learning the difference can allow us to be more intentional. Whether anticipating workplace triggers that may arise, or noticing communication cycles that you and your partner get stuck in, we’ll build useful practices that are in line with what matters to you.

Sometimes it might be more helpful to try something other than what we're used to, which can feel unnatural. We all have our “go-tos” when life gets hard. And though trying something new might feel a bit uncomfortable at first, that doesn’t mean it’s not a step in the right direction. There are also times in life when we can do things “exactly right,” and still not get the results we were hoping for. Therapy can be a place to recognize discomfort as an emotion, and not necessarily as a sign of “I must be doing something wrong.” So whether trying out a new way of interacting with a friend, or maintaining a boundary with a family member, we’ll continue to remember that we don’t always feel relief at first when doing something meaningful.

For those interested in learning more about my specific orientations, here is a list of what I draw from, learned in trainings, and/or from my education: