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Therapy for Depression & Anxiety

When did you last feel good?

Not just “less bad” or numb, but when did you actually feel pleasure, peace, fulfillment, or joy – without it being overshadowed by guilt or shame?

Maybe you’re feeling:

Life’s moving at a breakneck pace, but your thoughts might be racing even faster. Critiquing yourself from every angle, you analyze conversations with friends from months ago, replay this morning’s meeting, and wonder if your partner’s mad at you.
It’s exhausting how easily and often whirlpools of thoughts and fears can suck you into a spiral of to-do’s, what-if’s, and worries about hypothetical catastrophes. Sometimes you sink hours into overpreparing, and perfectionism pushes you into going above and beyond the assignment (whether it’s making a deck for quarterly reports, throwing your friend a surprise birthday party, or planning your next travel itinerary). But what people don’t see is your battle with procrastination beforehand – how escalating shame and last-minute panic is what fuels you across the finish line.
You’re nervous and guilty about how your overwhelm, irritability, and resentment can slip (or explode) out onto your loved ones or at work. The heart-pounding, jaw-clenching physical panic and a distracting din of worst-case scenarios have you feeling trapped in tension.
Whether you slept for four or twelve hours, you’re always tired, and you just can’t muster up the energy to engage with your life anymore, let alone feel enjoyment or enthusiasm about it. You’ve been leaving your friends on read and cancelling plans more and more, because you can’t bear getting out of bed. Plus, it’s getting harder to believe that they’d actually even want you there.
You might be scraping by, keeping up appearances, or even excelling in some ways, but no amount of accolades or reassurances seems to convince you that you’re not a failure. Although there’s plenty in your life you think you should feel grateful for, or proud of, you mostly just feel guilty that you’re not happy and sure that you’ll be found out as a fraud eventually.
Being berated by a cutting, internal narration of everything you’re doing wrong or should’ve known is just an inherent part of being awake now. So you watch yourself click “add to cart” on another skincare product you know you won’t use, or pour your third “last glass” of wine, trying to numb the ache that won’t go away. You can’t focus anymore (unless it’s on excruciating memories, like replaying when you came out to your mom, or a montage of your middle school bullies), and you become paralyzed at having to make the smallest decision.
With the overwhelm of everyday life and heavy pressure crushing you further into this deep pit, you don’t know how you’ll escape.

I want you to know – you won’t be trapped in these feelings forever. There may not be an instant fix, but therapy can help you get through it.

There is a way out of anxiety and depression.

While the exact route is unique to each person, there do tend to be some common landmarks along the way. Together, we’ll plot out a highly tailored and practical plan specific to your context, challenges, and strengths. As we address your most pressing concerns and work through what’s under the surface, you’ll find that the dead end you’ve been stuck in begins transforming into many possible paths forward.

Healing and growth doesn’t happen on a linear track, but the process of therapy generally involves some looping combination of a few elements.

Together, we’ll:

Working collaboratively, we will figure out what needs to change, what to prioritize, and, more importantly, how to get there. Often this means testing out new ways of managing the toughest moments – or of mapping out new approaches to clichéd advice (e.g. Journal! Meditate!) that pick out and personalize what’s useful, leaving the rest behind.
With a nonjudgemental, harm reduction approach, we can experiment together to identify what small, achievable steps look like for you right now. Instead of relying on sheer willpower or self-berating, we’ll draw on your strengths and break things down to find what actually works.
As you get more steady — grounded and equipped with tools to turn to —space opens up for us to take a look at the path behind you. Without blaming or shaming, we can situate what’s going on for you now in the context of your family upbringing and culture, influential or traumatic experiences, and the broader social and systemic backdrop.
Uncovering themes and throughlines can bring more clarity and compassion for your past and present selves, helping you become less harsh with yourself. As you become less caught in imposed narratives and more curious than judgemental about your unhelpful habits as we turn down the volume on your negative thoughts and worries.
Having taken stock of where you are and what’s led you there, we can start looking forward beyond exclusively worst-case scenarios or just barely scraping through the day. When you’ve been focused on survival and stuck in a scarcity mindset, it can feel unfamiliar, bewildering, and scary to widen your view; you’re allowed to want something more though, even if you’re not sure what that is yet.
Together, we’ll untangle your conflicting desires and parse through the Purity Culture messages, gender socialization, and external pressures to uncover who you are, what you actually believe, and what you really want. We’ll balance relearning how to dream, exploring your values, and laying out your long-term goals with figuring out everyday routines and small-but-not-easy habits can both support and sustain you for a journey that’s truly your own.

Therapy with me doesn’t involve :

Relying on cookie-cutter plans, rote strategies, and perspectives that assume one size fits all
Shaming, moralizing, or being shocked by your thoughts, feelings, experiences, and how you’ve coped with them
Getting into unconvincing arguments with your negative thoughts and worries that don’t touch how you feel
Dismissing or minimizing the very real dangers, disasters, and systemic inequities that tangibly shape and impact your experiences and options
Blaming you for not “working hard enough,” manifesting, or bootstrapping your way out of feeling bad

Therapy with me does involve :

Tackling the topics no one else will touch with compassion and curiosity
Addressing your right-now pain and getting to the underlying root that keeps it coming back up again and again
Building up your tolerance and skills for handling tough emotions and situations with creativity and collaboration
Acknowledging the realities of living under the oppressive -isms while holding onto personal and collective agency
Respecting your capacity and context and working with your strengths, neurodivergence, and timing