Virtual individual therapy for adults throughout California
You’ve tried to get ahead of it. It’s still there.
Anxiety. Poor sleep. Physical tension. Panic. A loss that has left you reeling. A health scare that changed how you think about the future. Work stress that no longer feels like just work stress.
You may have already tried to address it. Changed your habits. Exercised more. Improved your diet. Read extensively. Tried meditation, supplements, apps, routines, therapy, or new ways of thinking about the problem.
And yet something still feels wrong.
Maybe the problem is not that you have failed to find the right solution. Maybe something about the way you understand yourself - or the life you thought you were building - isn’t working anymore.
When effort stops working
You are used to figuring things out
You’re thoughtful, capable, and accustomed to solving problems.
When something goes wrong, your instinct may be to research it, analyze it, improve your habits, or identify the variable you have missed. Intelligence, effort, and self-discipline have probably taken you a long way.
Until now.
Some experiences don’t respond predictably to more information or control.
A breakup can raise questions larger than the relationship. A medical diagnosis can change your relationship with time. Career uncertainty can unsettle your sense of competence and worth. A transition you once wanted can leave you wondering why you aren’t happier. Anxiety can persist even after you have addressed every obvious source of stress.
The more urgently you try to solve the problem, the more trapped inside it you may feel.
Eventually, the question can shift from:
“How do I make this stop?”
to
“What is actually happening to me?”
Beneath the immediate problem
The symptom may be where a deeper conflict becomes visible
Anxiety, insomnia, loneliness, grief, panic, and physical tension are real. Wanting relief from them makes sense.
But symptoms can also emerge when the framework that once organized your life no longer fits your experience.
You may have built your identity around achievement, discipline, independence, or being able to handle things. Then something happens that cannot be mastered through effort alone. The strategies that once made you feel capable begin to leave you isolated, exhausted, or increasingly afraid.
Underneath the immediate problem, you may find yourself confronting questions such as:
- What if my efforts are not enough?
- Who am I if I do not become the person I expected to be?
- Why do I feel alone even when other people are present?
- What happens if the future I planned never arrives?
- Will I always feel this way?
- Will I die without having really lived?
These questions may be uncomfortable, but they aren’t evidence that something is wrong with you. They may be asking for a kind of attention that another routine, explanation, or distraction cannot provide.
Therapy can become a place to give them that attention.
Existential therapy
A different kind of therapy
I practice existential therapy. This doesn’t mean having abstract conversations about “the meaning of life” or replacing one belief system with another.
It means taking seriously the realities beneath many psychological struggles: uncertainty, freedom, responsibility, isolation, intimacy, loss, identity, mortality, and the need for a life that feels worth living.
I don’t begin with a fixed explanation of who you are or what your symptoms mean. I pay close attention to the specific way you think, the language you use, the conclusions you have drawn, and the strategies you continue to rely on.
I ask a lot of questions.
That curiosity is not meant to lead you toward an answer I have already chosen. It is a way of examining the assumptions beneath your existing answers - including ones you may never have realized you were making.
My role is not to fit you into a theory.
It is to think with you.
The relationship
What working together is like
I’m warm, direct, and highly inquisitive.
I listen closely to the nuances of your experience and avoid making leaps about your motives, identity, or what you “really” feel. When I notice a pattern, I will bring it to you as a possibility - not pronounce it as a fact. You are always free to disagree, correct me, or help me see something differently.
You don’t need to perform the role of a patient or defer to me as the authority on your life. Therapy works when there is enough trust for us to examine difficult things honestly, without either of us pretending to know more than we do.
This is not therapy built around quick fixes, packaged exercises, or allegiance to a particular acronym. I may draw from different therapeutic approaches when they are useful, but no technique can substitute for understanding the person experiencing the problem.
The aim is not simply to give you another way to suppress what you feel.
It is to help you encounter your experience differently - so that your symptoms may loosen, your relationships may deepen, and your life is no longer organized entirely around avoiding uncertainty or maintaining control.
This work may be for you if…
You can explain yourself well but sense that your explanations are no longer changing anything.
You are tired of cycling through research, self-diagnosis, optimization, distraction, and temporary relief.
You have begun to question the ideas about success, identity, relationships, or control that once guided you.
You want a therapist who will genuinely engage with you - not lecture you, passively reflect your words, or impose a predetermined interpretation.
You are willing to question even the assumptions that have helped you feel safe.
You don’t need to know exactly what is wrong.
You only need to recognize that the way you have been approaching it is no longer enough.
You don’t need to arrive with the right explanation
You may come because you are anxious.
Because you cannot sleep.
Because your relationship ended.
Because your health changed.
Because work has become unbearable.
Because you feel lonely but don’t entirely understand why.
Because you have reached a point in your life that doesn’t feel the way you expected it to.
That is enough.
We can start there.
A place to begin
Schedule a consultation
A free 15-minute consultation gives us a chance to talk briefly about what brings you to therapy and whether working together may feel right.