Fees and Frequently Asked Questions

Relational psychodynamic therapy is a depth-oriented approach that helps you understand the underlying emotional and relational patterns shaping your anxiety, self-criticism, and relationships.

Many of my clients are thoughtful, high-functioning adults who appear capable on the outside but feel internally overwhelmed, disconnected, or exhausted from constantly striving. You may understand yourself intellectually yet still find yourself repeating the same patterns: overworking, overthinking, overgiving, shutting down, or feeling unseen in relationships.

Rather than focusing only on symptom management, we explore where these patterns began. Often, they formed early in life as adaptations to family dynamics, cultural expectations, or relational experiences. Together, we gently bring awareness to those patterns, including how they may show up in our work, so you can begin to relate to yourself and others with more clarity and choice.

Instead of trying to silence anxiety or “fix” parts of you, we become curious about them. As we understand the deeper emotional roots, symptoms often soften naturally. Clients often experience less perfectionism, more emotional steadiness, and more freedom in their relationships.

This work is reflective, collaborative, and insight-oriented. The goal is not quick behavioral change alone, but meaningful and lasting shifts in how you experience yourself and connect with others.

I provide relational psychodynamic therapy in the Bay Area, California, and offer virtual therapy for adults throughout California.

I work best with thoughtful, high-achieving adults in the Bay Area, California including professionals, parents, and creatives who function well externally but feel internally anxious, self-critical, or emotionally stuck.

Many of my clients struggle with:

• High-functioning anxiety, perfectionism, or burnout

• Repeating relational patterns or unresolved conflicts

• Parenting challenges and wanting to break generational patterns

• Difficulty expressing needs or feeling seen in relationships

• Life transitions, such as career changes, new relationships, or major identity shifts

They often understand themselves intellectually but want deeper insight and emotional clarity. Relational psychodynamic therapy helps uncover the underlying patterns shaping your relationships, parenting, work, and sense of self so you can create meaningful, lasting change. If this resonates, you’re welcome to reach out to schedule a consultation. We can talk about what’s bringing you in and what you hope to get from therapy.

I provide therapy in the Bay Area, California, and virtually throughout California.

• Individual Therapy (50 minutes): $235

• Couples Therapy (50 minutes): $275

I am an out-of-network provider, which means I do not accept insurance directly. However, I can provide a monthly superbill — a detailed invoice that you can submit to your insurance for potential reimbursement, depending on your plan.

Payment is due at the time of each session and can be made via credit/debit card or secure electronic payment.

Insurance & Reimbursement: If you have an insurance plan with out-of-network mental health coverage, you may be able to get reimbursed for a portion of your therapy costs. I recommend contacting your insurance company to ask:

• Do I have out-of-network mental health benefits?

• What percentage of the session fee is reimbursed?

• Is there a deductible I must meet first?

• How do I submit a superbill for reimbursement?

Online therapy offers the same compassionate support and depth of work as in-person sessions, with the added convenience of connecting from your own space.

Sessions are held just like in-person therapy: we meet at a regular time, and the focus is on what you’re thinking, feeling, and experiencing. Online therapy can be just as effective and meaningful. Many people find it helps them open up more easily in the comfort of their own environment.

Research shows that online therapy is just as effective as face-to-face therapy for many issues. It also removes some of the barriers that might keep people from seeking help like travel time, scheduling, or accessibility.

The length of therapy varies from person to person. Some people come for a few months to work through a specific issue, while others choose to stay in therapy longer to explore deeper patterns, relationships, or long-standing emotional struggles.

As a psychodynamic therapist, I work in a way that values depth, reflection, and the unfolding of your unique inner world — this kind of work often takes time. That said, we’ll move at your pace and check in along the way to make sure the process continues to feel meaningful and supportive to you.

There’s no set timeline. Some clients find that once therapy becomes part of their life, it’s a space they want to keep returning to, while others reach a point where they feel ready to end. We’ll talk openly about that whenever the time feels right.

The first session is a chance for us to begin getting to know each other. I’ll ask some questions to better understand what’s bringing you to therapy, what you’re struggling with, and what you hope to gain from the process. You’re also welcome to share anything that feels important to you, at your own pace.

As a psychodynamic therapist, I’m especially interested in how your current difficulties might be shaped by past experiences, relationships, and unconscious patterns. That said, our first meeting is really about creating a space where you feel safe, seen, and heard. There's no pressure to “perform” or explain everything all at once.

You might leave the session with a sense of relief, curiosity, or even some uncertainty. All of that is okay. Therapy is a process, and this is just the beginning.

The questions below come from people who eventually found their way to depth work. If any of them sound like something you've typed into a search bar late at night, you're in the right place.

I've been in therapy before, but it never felt like it went deep enough. What's different here?

That experience is worth paying attention to. A lot of therapy is structured around managing symptoms, building coping skills, or addressing specific situations. That work has its place. But for some people, the problem isn't that they don't know what to do. It's that something older and less visible keeps pulling them back.

Depth therapy — sometimes called psychodynamic or insight-oriented therapy — is oriented toward that layer. Rather than staying at the level of thoughts and behaviors, it moves toward the underlying emotional patterns, relational histories, and interior dynamics that shape how you move through the world. If you've had the sense that therapy has been working around the edges of something rather than at its center, depth work is built for exactly that.

I'm successful on the outside, but something feels off. I feel empty or disconnected, and I'm not sure why.

You're allowed to feel this. And you're not imagining it.

The gap between a life that looks full and an inner life that feels thin is one of the quieter forms of suffering — and one of the harder ones to bring into a room, because it doesn't come with an obvious name. Depth therapy is interested in exactly that gap. Not in talking you out of your success, but in understanding what your inner life has had to set aside to get here. That kind of clarity tends to create movement where nothing else has.

I keep repeating the same patterns — in relationships, at work, with myself. I don't know why I can't seem to change them.

Patterns repeat for a reason. They were organized by experiences that are still doing their job, even when that job has long since become unnecessary. You're not repeating them because you're unaware or stuck. You're repeating them because some part of you still believes they make sense.

Depth therapy is about getting curious about that logic — understanding what the pattern is protecting you from, and where it first took hold. That's different from trying to change the behavior. And in my experience, it's what actually moves things.

I struggle with anxiety. I've tried coping strategies, but the anxiety keeps coming back. Is there another way?

Anxiety that keeps returning despite solid coping usually isn't a skills problem. It's pointing to something.

Depth therapy takes anxiety seriously as a signal, not just a symptom. We'd explore what it's responding to, where it comes from, what it might be trying to protect. That's slower work than a coping strategy. But it tends to create a different relationship to the anxiety itself.

I deal with perfectionism, imposter syndrome, or the feeling that no matter what I accomplish, it's never enough.

Perfectionism and imposter syndrome tend to be organized around a core fear — of being found out, of not being enough, of what happens if you stop performing at that level. It is usually a learned belief or a role that got assigned early and was never fully examined.

Depth therapy is interested in where that fear comes from and what it's been protecting you from. The goal isn't to convince you that you're good enough. It's to understand why you came to believe you weren't, and to let that belief become less organizing.

I have trouble with closeness in relationships. I push people away, choose the wrong partners, or feel like I can never quite connect.

These patterns usually started as solutions. Something about closeness became complicated early — unpredictable, conditional, or simply painful — and a part of you learned to manage that.

In depth therapy, we'd look at that history not to assign blame, but to understand what you've been working with. Attachment patterns are durable, but they're not permanent. Understanding where yours came from tends to loosen their hold in ways that behavioral changes alone don't.

I became a parent and feel like I've lost myself. Or I'm seeing my own childhood differently now and don't know what to do with it.

Becoming a parent is one of the more powerful developmental moments in adult life. It tends to surface everything — your own early experiences, the things you want to do differently, the grief or complexity you've been carrying without fully realizing it.

Depth therapy has particular relevance here because it's interested in the history that lives in the present. We'd work with what's coming up for you now in a way that's connected to where it comes from, which tends to be more settling than processing each situation in isolation.