Psychodynamic Therapy for Women in Los Angeles
In-person & virtual Psychodynamic Therapy for women in Los Angeles & California. Dive into past experiences, thoughts and feelings to understand how they shape who you are today.
THE BASICS
What is Psychodynamic Therapy?
Psychodynamic therapy is a depth-oriented approach designed to help you understand how the past has shaped who you are today, how you act and how you experience the world.
In psychodynamic therapy, we work to uncover the root causes of your challenges rather than just addressing the present symptoms showing up in daily life with practical coping skills. The goal is to establish better emotional self-awareness so that you can understand why you are the way you are, make healthier choices and the resulting change can be deeper & longer-lasting.
Together, we’ll look at some of the things that may have influenced you from an early age: early childhood memories, bonds with early caregivers, past relationships or traumatic experiences.
THE BENEFITS
What can Psychodynamic Therapy help with?
Thanks to its depth-oriented nature, the Psychodynamic framework can be used to help you identify the unconscious drivers behind a variety of different mental health challenges.
Psychodynamic Therapy can help you:
✦ Develop a deeper sense of self-awareness and self-understanding
✦ Address root causes of persistent anxiety, stress, depression or inner conflict
✦ Replace harmful coping mechanisms with newer, healthier ones
✦ Break repeating relationship cycles based like people-pleasing
✦ Overcome relationship obstacles like fear of abandonment or trust issues
✦ Create more long-lasting change that develops and grows even after therapy ends
WHAT TO EXPECT
What happens during Psychodynamic Therapy?
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In psychodynamic therapy, our therapeutic relationship lays the foundation for all of our work together. That means we can only do this type of work if you feel safe and comfortable to be 100% honest with me and never fear judgement or criticism for anything you say/feel/think.
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Psychodynamic therapy doesn’t follow a strict step-by-step process. Instead, we’ll have open-ended conversations where you can say whatever comes to your mind. You can talk to me about past pain, life experiences or relationships and share what emotions you remember having in the moment. Together, we’ll explore how you experienced these things at the time and how they may relate to certain patterns/thoughts/beliefs showing up in your life today.
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You might not hear me call these strategies by their name but there are a variety of different psychodynamic techniques we might use to help guide explorations of your past. Such as:
Free association: You freely share whatever thoughts, feelings & emotions come up in regards to a specific topic, situation or person without any filter.
Dream analysis: We discuss how certain themes, symbols or events in your dreams may represent certain unconscious desires, fears or internal conflict.
Defense mechanism identification: We’ll explore when you are using certain psychological defense mechanisms to protect yourself from feeling negative emotions.
Pattern detection: We’ll try to identify whether there are repeating patterns in your thoughts, feelings, behavior that can give us clues as to what area of your life you may be carrying repressed and unprocessed emotions.
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The goal of psychodynamic therapy goes beyond just wanting to increase self-understanding for its own sake. That’s why we’ll always focus on understanding what any new insight might mean for you today and how you can make effective changes based on that new information.
BEYOND PSYCHODYNAMIC THERAPY
My holistic therapy approach to support the whole you - mind, body & spirit
You may be coming to therapy with a specific approach in mind. Maybe you’ve heard that Psychodynamic Therapy can help you understand how your past shapes who you are today. If you’re interested in exploring psychodynamic therapy specifically, you’re more than welcome to let me know and we can incorporate that type of work into your treatment.
More often than not, therapy isn’t quite that straight-lined though. Holistic healing requires that you look at all the areas of your life - past and present, mind, body (and sometimes spirit). To achieve that, I like to use a variety of different types of approaches. That means one session we might use psychodynamic therapy to explore past experiences. Another, we might use attachment-based therapy to better understand your relationship patterns. If you’re struggling with anxious thoughts, we might explore CBT-based tools and if you’re struggling to feel present in your body, we might try some somatic-based tools.
My goal is never to fit you into one particular therapeutic model. It's to draw from the approaches that are most helpful for you when they are needed so we can achieve holistic healing on all levels.
MY SPECIALITIES
I offer Psychodynamic Therapy for women in Los Angeles navigating …
Anxiety, Chronic Stress
& Overthinking
Trauma & Inner Child Healing
Relationship, Dating
& Attachment
Pregnancy, Postpartum
& Infertility
Self-Esteem, Self-Love
& Self-Worth
Ambition, Achievement
& Burnout
Finding Yourself &
Your Identity
GETTING STARTED
Take your first step towards starting Psychodynamic Therapy
If you’re interested in getting started, have questions that aren’t answered here or would like to meet me, I invite you to reach out and schedule a free consultation. No pressure to commit, just a chance for us to get to know each other and see if we would be a good fit.