Individual Therapy in San Diego | Trauma, Anxiety & Attachment

When Something Needs to Change

Sometimes it’s obvious what brings you to therapy. Something happened. A relationship changed. Anxiety has gotten louder. An old experience is showing up in ways you didn’t expect.

Other times, it’s harder to name. On paper, things may even look pretty good, yet something feels off. You may feel disconnected from yourself, overwhelmed by emotions that seem bigger than the moment, or tired of managing things in ways that used to work but don’t anymore.

You don’t need to wait until things fall apart, and you don’t need to have a perfectly articulated reason for wanting support.

Therapy gives us a place to begin with what’s happening now and get curious about where the work needs to go. Some days that may mean going somewhere deep. Other days, we may spend some time figuring out why the thing you swore you were definitely over is, in fact, still very much in the room.

My role isn’t to rescue you, fix you, or tell you who you should become. It’s to stay engaged with you, help you understand what’s happening, and create space for experiences that can lead to meaningful change.

What It’s Like to Work Together

I take the work seriously, but I don’t believe therapy has to feel serious all the time. There is room for depth, emotion, curiosity, humor, and the occasional moment when we both have to acknowledge, “Well, that makes a lot of sense.”

I’ll ask questions, notice things, slow us down when something important is happening, and sometimes gently challenge you to stay with something you might rather move past. I won’t expect you to have the perfect words or know exactly where we’re going before we get there.

Some people come in knowing exactly what they want to work on. Others start with, “I don’t really know. I just know I don’t want to keep feeling like this.” Both are perfectly good places to begin.

You get to bring the whole, imperfect, complicated version of yourself into the room. We’ll work from there.

Considering Individual Therapy?

If you’re curious about working together, I offer a brief consultation where we can talk about what you’re looking for, answer any questions, and see if it feels like a good fit.

Some of the Places We Can Go

Relationships & Attachment

Relationship concerns don’t always have to be addressed in couples therapy. Sometimes your partner isn’t interested in participating, the relationship has ended, or you simply want a space that is focused on your experience within your relationships.

In individual therapy, we can explore how you experience closeness, conflict, vulnerability, boundaries, and disconnection and how your own attachment history may show up in the relationships that matter to you.

The goal isn’t to teach you how to say the perfect thing or make someone else respond differently. It’s to help you better understand yourself in relationship, have more choice in how you respond, and create space for the kind of connection you want.

Transitions & Change

Even wanted changes can be complicated. A new relationship, marriage, career shift, move, becoming a parent, or entering a different season of life can bring up emotions you didn’t necessarily expect.

Other transitions arrive without our choosing them and ask us to adjust before we feel ready. Therapy can offer space to make sense of what is changing, what you may be leaving behind, and what you need as you find your footing in what comes next.

Sometimes change is exciting. Sometimes it’s painful. Often, it’s a little bit of both.

Attachment

Our earliest relationships can shape what we come to expect from closeness; whether others will be there for us, whether our needs are welcome, and what we learn to do when connection feels uncertain.

Those experiences don’t disappear when we become adults. They can show up in romantic relationships, friendships, family relationships, and even in how we relate to ourselves. You may notice yourself pulling away, holding tightly, struggling to trust, fearing rejection, or working very hard to feel secure with the people you love.

Therapy gives us an opportunity to understand these experiences with curiosity rather than judgment. Our attachment histories influence us, but they don’t have to determine what comes next.

Loss & Grief

Grief can follow many kinds of loss, not only the death of someone we love. It can come with the end of a relationship, a change in health, infertility or pregnancy loss, a move, a changing family, the loss of a role or identity, or even the future you imagined but didn’t get to have.

Some losses are visible and easily recognized by others. Others are quieter and harder to explain, but no less meaningful.

There is no single way to grieve and no timeline for when you should be “over it.” Therapy can offer a place to make room for what has been lost, what has changed, and the emotions that come with learning to live alongside something you didn’t choose.

Grief doesn’t always need to be fixed. Sometimes it needs somewhere to go.

Depression

Depression doesn’t always look like overwhelming sadness. Sometimes it feels like disconnection, exhaustion, irritability, numbness, or simply not feeling quite like yourself. Things that once mattered may feel harder to access, and even ordinary parts of life can begin to require more effort than they used to.

Therapy can offer space to understand what you’re experiencing without reducing it to a list of symptoms or something you should be able to “snap out of.” We can pay attention to what may be contributing to the depression, how it is affecting your relationship with yourself and others, and what you need as we work toward change.

Anxiety & Panic

Anxiety has a way of making everything feel urgent. Your mind may race ahead, searching for what could go wrong, replaying what already happened, or trying to find certainty where there simply isn’t any. Sometimes anxiety is loud and unmistakable. Other times, it looks like overthinking, perfectionism, difficulty making decisions, needing reassurance, or having a hard time letting your guard down.

It can also show up in the body; a racing heart, tightness in your chest, difficulty sleeping, restlessness, or the sudden intensity of panic that seems to come out of nowhere.

Sometimes anxiety is connected to experiences that your nervous system has learned to respond to as threatening, even when you know logically that you’re safe. EMDR Therapy can help us work with the experiences, beliefs, and triggers that may be contributing to those responses, rather than focusing only on managing the symptoms.

Self-Esteem & Self-Worth

Self-esteem isn’t always about confidence. Sometimes it shows up in the way you speak to yourself, how quickly you assume you’ve done something wrong, the pressure to get things right, or the difficulty believing that you are enough without having to prove it.

These beliefs about ourselves don’t develop in a vacuum. Experiences of criticism, rejection, failure, shame, or not feeling seen or valued can shape the conclusions we carry forward: I’m not good enough. I’m too much. I don’t matter. Something is wrong with me.

EMDR Therapy can help us work with the experiences connected to these beliefs — not simply replace a negative thought with a positive one. As earlier experiences are processed and integrated, there can be more room for beliefs about yourself that feel more accurate and adaptive in the present.

The goal isn’t endless confidence or loving every part of yourself all the time. It’s developing a sense of worth that isn’t so easily determined by what happened to you, what someone else thinks, or whether you got everything right.

Stress & Overwhelm

Stress is part of being human, but sometimes the demands of life begin to exceed the capacity we have available to meet them. You may notice yourself becoming more reactive, depleted, irritable, shut down, or simply feeling like there is very little room left for one more thing.

Therapy isn’t always about removing the stressor (because sometimes the stressor isn’t going anywhere). Instead, we can work on expanding your capacity to be with difficult emotions and experiences without becoming as overwhelmed by them.

EMDR Therapy can be part of this work. By addressing experiences and triggers that may intensify your response to stress, EMDR can help promote greater emotional flexibility — more room to notice what’s happening, stay connected to yourself, and respond rather than automatically react.

The goal isn’t to become someone who never gets overwhelmed. It’s to have a little more room inside when life asks a lot of you.

Trauma, Complex Trauma & PTSD

Trauma isn’t defined only by what happened, but also by how an experience was processed and what continues to live on in the present. For some people, trauma is connected to a single overwhelming event. For others, it develops through repeated or chronic experiences, such as relational instability, neglect, loss, criticism, or not having the safety and support that was needed over time.

Complex and developmental trauma can be less obvious. Rather than a specific memory that feels traumatic, you may notice its impact in the way you relate to yourself and others: difficulty trusting, chronic shame, feeling responsible for other people’s emotions, staying on alert, shutting down, or feeling as though you’re never quite safe enough to let your guard down.

EMDR Therapy can help us work with experiences that remain unprocessed and continue to shape how you feel, believe, and respond in the present. The work involves more than processing traumatic memories. Assessment, preparation, resourcing, and building the capacity to stay present with difficult material are important parts of the process—particularly when working with complex trauma.

My approach to EMDR is also relational and attachment-focused. Through Relational EMDR Therapy® (R-EMDR), we pay attention not only to what happened then, but to what may be needed now for those experiences to be more fully processed and integrated.

Separation, Divorce & Relationship Loss

The end of a relationship can bring many emotions at once. There may be grief and sadness, but also anger, relief, uncertainty, guilt, or even moments of hope. You may be grieving the person and the relationship itself, while also grieving the future you imagined you would have together.

Separation can also change how you understand yourself. Roles shift. Routines change. Friendships and family relationships may look different. If children are involved, you may be navigating co-parenting while trying to make sense of your own experience at the same time.

Therapy can offer a place to process what happened, tend to the attachment injuries or losses that remain, and begin making sense of who you are outside of the relationship.

Moving forward doesn’t require you to minimize what the relationship meant to you. You can honor what was important and still make room for what comes next.

What Might Feel Different:

• Feeling more secure and connected in your relationships

• Understanding and expressing your needs more clearly

• Setting boundaries without as much guilt or second-guessing

• Working with anxiety, panic, and the need for certainty or control

• Developing greater flexibility around perfectionism and self-criticism

• Strengthening self-worth and self-compassion

• Processing trauma, attachment wounds, and painful experiences through EMDR Therapy

• Working through shame, guilt, and negative beliefs about yourself

• Navigating grief, loss, separation, and major life transitions

• Understanding how family-of-origin experiences continue to affect you

• Becoming less reactive and more able to stay present with difficult emotions

• Feeling more grounded in who you are and what matters to you

• Creating more choice in patterns that once felt automatic

• Building greater emotional capacity and resilience

• Experiencing more freedom in your relationship with yourself and others

 If you’re curious about working together, you’re welcome to reach out. We can start with a brief consultation to talk about what you’re looking for and whether it feels like a good fit.