"We tell ourselves stories in order to live."

 -- Joan Didion, The White Album

Welcome. There are many different therapists and different ways of working. The relationship fit between you and your therapist will play a large part in what you get out of your therapy, so here I'd like to tell you a little bit more about how I approach therapy. 

People often consider starting therapy at a moment where it feels like something needs to change. You may know this feeling and have a sense that you'd like something to be different: perhaps within yourself, a relationship, or your career. 

In explaining how I approach therapy, I reference the work of the writer Joan Didion, who uses the word "stories" to describe the narratives each of us creates as we go through the world. These stories begin at a young age and stay with us, often playing a key role in how we see and experience other people and the world.

By exploring the stories that have shaped your life, you are likely to gain understanding into how you see yourself, how you see others, and how you see the world. Uncovering these forgotten stories often helps to provide the missing link for the feeling of "stuckness" that many people experience.

How do these stories that you've told yourself help you to understand current problems or to initiate change? Ernest Hemingway had a theory about writing, called the The Theory of Omission, which is often referred to as The Iceberg Theory. Hemingway noted that when we read a story, we see characters' behavior in the present, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. To really understand what was truly going on with a character, you had to wonder about what you didn't see -- what was only visible under the surface, much like with an iceberg, where no matter how large it appeared above the water, its true size could only be appreciated once you saw its base under the water. However big or intimidating the iceberg above the water, it was only the tip when taken in context with its unseen base below the water. Or, said another way: from sea level one thinks the whole of the iceberg is seen, but what is below the water is actually the majority of the iceberg, even though you can't see it.

The stories we tell ourselves often function in the same way as the base of the iceberg. We see the tip of the iceberg in specific problems, challenges, and relationships, but we may be helped by expanding our focus to what is beneath the water, things we no longer see (or never saw) or may imagine are unrelated to the problem at hand, and yet, they are so much a part of why we are having these specific challenges.

Like the body of the iceberg, people usually aren't aware of the stories they tell themselves because they are out of our conscious awareness. We quite literally do not see them. Moreover, the longer a particular story has been with you, the more likely it is you've come to think of it as a truth, something that always was -- an immovable base -- as opposed to remembering that it formed in response to something, and its "truth" may not be as immovable as we think. 

As your therapist, I'll work with you to explore where you find yourself in this moment by identifying the stories you tell yourself about who you are, who you think you can (or can't) be, and why you believe you are where you are. In situations where trauma has occurred, we will work together to help you integrate a painful experience into your large life narrative so that it exists neither in a box you don't want to touch nor as the whole of your story. This theory of understanding what we can't see and the stories we tell also helps to understand how social systems also play a role in our experiences, where it is often useful to think about how socially reinforced ideas about race, gender, sexuality, and class can contribute to who we think we are and what we think is available to us.

By working in the way described above, you may not only find solutions to the problems you may have brought to therapy, but you may also discover that your specific stories have played a crucial role in shaping you, your relationships, and your understanding of major events, especially those that may have felt beyond your control or power. 

In therapy, you may discover that certain old stories no longer apply or that it is time to change the script. By exploring what is under the daily problems you experience, you may find that stories that were once helpful, adaptive, or even life-saving are now limiting or confining.  In working together, we will explore how you see yourself, how you imagine others see you, and we will be curious together about what you want and who you want to be. In that way, the hope is that you will not only leave with a better understanding of the specific problems you may have brought to therapy but also a better understanding of yourself, allowing for a greater sense of personal freedom, self-understanding, and self-expression moving forward.