50-minute sessions, in-person in Palo Alto or via telehealth across California. Depth-oriented work rooted in Gestalt and relational psychology — present-centered, embodied, and genuinely engaged.
Book a Free Consultation →Anxiety that doesn't respond to logic. Relationships that follow the same script. A feeling that you're showing up to your own life from just slightly outside of it. These aren't character flaws — they're adaptations. We look at what they adapted to, and what it would mean to need that less.
Grief that doesn't fit the expected timeline. Identity questions that are hard to put words to. A sense that you want more from your life — not more things, but more aliveness in the things already there. Therapy is where you don't have to translate yourself first.
Gestalt therapy is present-centered — we don't just report on the week, we notice what's happening in the room. The way you hold something. The moment you go slightly flat. The thing you almost didn't say. The body holds the story that words have been protecting.
Gestalt is the original present-centered therapy. Developed by Fritz and Laura Perls in the 1950s, it starts from a simple premise: the most important thing happening is what's happening right now — in your body, in the room, between us.
We work with contact — the moment-to-moment quality of your engagement with your own experience. Where do you go away from yourself? Where does connection drop? The work happens in that noticing, not in analysis of it.
Object Relations theory looks at how early relationships become internalized templates — internal models of how closeness works, what to expect from others, and how much of yourself it's safe to bring forward.
We carry the figures of our formative relationships inside us long after those relationships change. The therapy relationship becomes a place where those templates can be examined — and, over time, revised.
The body holds the history that the mind has organized into narrative. Before there were words for what happened, the body knew. Sensorimotor approaches work with posture, breath, sensation, and movement — not as metaphor, but as direct information.
This doesn't mean we do bodywork on a table. It means we pay attention to what happens in the body when certain things are said — and we learn to work at the level where the story lives.
Depth psychology — particularly Jungian and post-Jungian traditions — holds that the psyche is larger than the ego. Dreams, images, synchronicities, and the felt sense of something beneath the surface are not decoration. They are the work.
If you bring your dreams, we can work with them. If you notice recurring images or patterns, we explore those. The unconscious is not a threat to be managed — it's a collaborator trying to be heard.
"Ultimately, it is the desire, not the desired, that we love."
— Irvin YalomThe first few sessions are for finding each other. You tell me what brought you here; I ask questions that might surprise you. We are not in a hurry to solve anything — we are learning to work together, and that takes time to do well.
As the work develops, sessions become more alive. You may notice things that used to slide past you. Patterns that once felt invisible start to have shape. The relationship between us becomes part of the work — because how you are with me is how you are with everything that matters.
The first session
We talk. I listen more than I speak. You share what brought you here — as much or as little as feels right. There is no intake form, no checklist. Just a conversation and the beginning of something.
The ongoing work
Weekly sessions, 50 minutes. Depth work happens over time — the early sessions establish ground; the real movement often comes later, once trust is in place and you have stopped editing yourself in real time.
When it is time to stop
Endings are part of the work. We will talk about it together, openly, when the time comes. The goal is not to need therapy forever — it is to need it until you do not.
50 minutes. Most clients meet weekly — especially at the beginning, when consistency matters most. Some transition to every-other-week as things stabilize.
667 Lytton Ave, Suite 9, Palo Alto, CA. Private, accessible parking. Telehealth available across California via a HIPAA-compliant video platform.
$250 per 50-minute session. Sliding scale available. In-network:. Superbills for other PPO plans. HSA/FSA accepted.
A free 15-minute consultation by phone or video. No forms to fill out first. We talk, we see if it's a fit. If not, I'll help point you somewhere useful.