Theoretical approaches act as a roadmap for psychologists, providing them with a framework for understanding people and their challenges. While you can expect our work together to be active and reflective, my theoretical approach is tailored to individual goals and needs. I often integrate psychodynamic and existential psychotherapies. These types of approaches are briefly described below.

​

Psychodynamic Psychotherapy

Psychodynamic psychotherapy helps people discover the root causes behind their counterproductive patterns and emotional suffering. It considers how past experiences, relationships, unconscious motivations, and internal conflicts influence present-day thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. It often utilizes a person's relationship with their psychologist as a mirror for examining troubled relationship patterns that were formed earlier in life. By exploring these formative experiences in depth, people can gain the new insights they need to make lasting changes and build the lives they want to lead. Broad questions that epitomize psychodynamic psychotherapy include:

 

• What "stories" did you acquire during your childhood/earlier life?

• How do these "stories" persist in the present and influence you now?

​

Existential Psychotherapy

Existential psychotherapy helps people address their fundamental questions about life and death, meaning and purpose, and freedom and responsibility. It views many mental health concerns, like depression and anxiety, as typical aspects of the human condition and a timely "invitation" to reassess one's path. Accordingly, it helps people think more deeply about their lives and explore their basic assumptions. In this way, it takes a philosophical stance toward mental health. Ultimately, existential psychotherapy enables people to access their capacity to make choices and develop their lives. Broad Questions that exemplify existential psychotherapy include:

​

• What meaning do you want to give to your life?

• What are your personal values and when do you find it difficult to follow them?