Theoretical orientation

I describe my approach as relational-eclectic. The relationship between us is the main instrument, and I borrow from several schools of thought rather than following one. I’m pragmatic: if something works, I’ll use it. Here’s where each influence came from and what it looks like in a session. You don’t need any of the vocabulary to work with me.

The relational part

I’m not silent and I’m not neutral in the blank-screen sense. I talk, I say what I think, and I’ll tell you when something you’ve described doesn’t square with something else you’ve described. I care more about what’s true for you than about running a protocol.

The work happens between two people being straight with each other, and it goes better when you can tell me that something I said missed.

Systems: the people around you

My graduate training was in systems counseling, and systemic thinking is one of my strong suits. It trains you to look at a person inside the relationships they live in (a marriage, a family, a workplace) rather than as a list of symptoms.

So I’ll ask about the people around you as well as about you: your spouse or ex, your children, your parents, your friends, the people at work. They aren’t in the room, but most of what you bring in involves them. In a divorce that’s especially true, because one relationship ends and every other one around it has to reorganize.

Small experiments between sessions

My early clinical work was relational-behavioral, and that stuck too. When we figure something out in a session, I’ll often suggest a small experiment to test it before the next one: a conversation to have, a message not to send, an hour to protect. Then we look at what happened.

Insight is useful. Finding out whether it holds up on a Tuesday is more useful.

Depth psychotherapy

My early mentors and supervisors were PhD depth psychotherapists. What I took from them is respect for how seriously people change, and patience with the parts of you that don’t make sense yet.

Parts work

Internal Family Systems, often called “parts work,” has shaped how I understand the way one person can want two opposite things at once. Many clients grasp it quickly, because it matches something they already know about themselves.

It comes up constantly in divorce. You can want the marriage over and be grieving it in the same afternoon. You can be furious with your ex and still want them to think well of you. Neither half is the real one, and the work goes better once you stop trying to pick.

Modern psychoanalytic theory

Since moving to Rhode Island in 2023, I’ve been more immersed in modern psychoanalytic theory. Two things in it are most useful to me. It explains well why capable adults, under enough strain, fall back on much older ways of coping. And it describes how people keep developing emotionally long after they’re grown.

Both matter in a divorce. The first explains a lot of what happens in the worst months. The second is what the years after can be for.

Where to go next

I see clients by video in Washington State and Rhode Island. Most of my work is with men going through a divorce and men co-parenting after one. If you want to know who you’d be talking to, about me covers that.