What’s is integrative therapy?

As an integrative therapist, I draw from several clinical and therapeutic approaches rather than using one fixed method for everyone. This allows therapy to be flexible, collaborative, and responsive to your history, needs, values, culture, relationships, and goals.

Psychotherapy needs models, but it also needs humility about models. The danger is not using theory. The danger is forgetting that theory is always an approximation. Good therapy depends on knowing when a model is useful, when it is limiting, and when the living complexity of the client exceeds the frame.

The approaches below are not separate formulas or prepackaged treatments. They are frameworks that inform how I listen, understand, and work with each person.

Relational and psychodynamic therapy explore how past experiences, early relationships, and unconscious patterns may be shaping your current emotions, relationships, and ways of coping.

This kind of therapy supports deeper insight and self-understanding, so old patterns can become less automatic. It also sees the therapy relationship itself as an important place for healing and change. Together, we may pay attention to trust, closeness, conflict, boundaries, and the ways you connect with others.

Mindfulness, Compassion, and Buddhist Psychology
My work is deeply informed by mindfulness, compassion, and ideas from Buddhist psychology. This does not require clients to hold any Buddhist or religious beliefs.

Buddhist psychology focuses on how suffering is created and relieved in the mind. In therapy, this can support greater self-awareness, acceptance, and the ability to relate to difficult thoughts and emotions with more steadiness and care.

Approaches that incorporate mindfulness, acceptance, and compassion, such as ACT, MBSR, MBCT, and DBT, have all been influenced by Buddhist psychology.

More about Buddhist Psychology

Acceptance-based and mindfulness-based cognitive behavioral approaches combine practical tools with present-moment awareness. They can help you notice thoughts, emotions, and habits without immediately getting pulled into them.

This does not mean forcing yourself to “think positive” or trying to eliminate difficult feelings. Instead, the focus is on changing how you relate to your inner experience, so you have more room for choice, self-compassion, and action that reflects your values.

Trauma-informed therapy recognizes how trauma can shape emotions, relationships, the body, and the nervous system. It emphasizes safety, trust, collaboration, and pacing, so therapy feels supportive rather than overwhelming.

This approach helps us move carefully and respectfully, without pushing too quickly or treating protective responses as flaws.

Feminist therapy explores how social, cultural, and systemic forces shape mental health, identity, relationships, and self-understanding.

It values intersectionality, collaboration, and empowerment, and supports clients in building voice, agency, and self-trust. While rooted in feminist principles, it is inclusive of people of all genders.