ONLINE THERAPY IN WASHINGTON STATE & California

Intensive Short Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP)

Heal From Attachment & Developmental Trauma

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You Want To Feel Better & Grow

Have you been in talk therapy for months or years without deep, lasting transformative change? 

  • Do you feel easily overwhelmed and confused by emotions? 

  • Do you feel alone, invisible, and like no one understands your experiences?

  • Do you avoid conflict, disagreements, and find it hard to ask for what you want?

  • Do you manage feelings and thoughts by avoiding or distracting through things like working and keeping busy? 


I practice a form of therapy called ISTDP which facilitates deep, long lasting, growth, change and insight and works quickly and rapidly.

What is ISTDP?

  • Evolved from traditional psychoanalytic principles based on the premise that unprocessed conflicted feelings related to attachment disruptions contribute to psychological symptoms, somatic symptoms and interpersonal problems.

  • Focus is on feeling emotions and sensations and using less psychological defenses like avoidance, rationalization, projection, splitting, intellectualizing, comparison, etc.

  • The goal of ISTDP therapy is to help clients heal from their past trauma/experiences and find ways to live happier and healthier lives.

  • In ISTDP therapy, we work together and explore your emotions, experiences, and memories related to the past.

  • One technique is called "experiential" because it helps the client connect with their emotions in a deep and meaningful way. This can involve talking about the trauma or using activities like guided imagery, imagining, inner child work, redoing the past.

  • I’ll help you build new skills and coping strategies to manage your emotions better, reduce stress, and improve overall well-being.

ISTDP Helps People Who

  • Intellectualize and use logic to process their emotions

  • Disassociate or disconnect from their feelings 

  • Fear and avoid vulnerability

  • Feel stuck in life 

  • Hold tension in their bodies 

  • Have psycho somatic issues related to their mental health issues (e.g. migraines, stomachaches, GI issues, fatigue)

  • Feel alone in their experiences 

  • Experienced relational and attachment trauma

  • Experience anxiety, depression, loneliness

  • Want to increase their self esteem

  • Experience the same relationship issues and want to shift unhelpful patterns/dynamics

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ISTDP Methods

  • Clarify defenses

  • Expand capacity

  • Restructure

Diagram explaining the Change Triangle concept, showing core emotions like fear, anger, sadness, disgust, joy, excitement, and sexual excitement at the center, with arrows pointing to defenses like avoiding emotions and inhibitory emotions such as anxiety, shame, and guilt. The diagram emphasizes an openhearted state of calm, curiosity, connection, compassion, confidence, courage, and clarity.

Examples of Defenses

Grief

  • Adaptive/Helpful: Tears over loss, with positive and negative memories. Leads to feeling relief.

  • Maladaptive/Unhelpful: Tears, leading to feeling worse/hopeless.

Anger

  • Adaptive/Helpful: A rush of energy to the body limbs, and feeling greater energy to set limits or make a change (boundary).

  • Maladaptive/Unhelpful: Frustration, leading to greater hopelessness.

Closeness/Tenderness

  • Adaptive/Helpful: Gentle, unexaggerated, tender connection based on acceptance of the whole person (strengths and weaknesses).

  • Maladaptive/Unhelpful: Idealized, perfectionistic image of the other person based on self-need and longing. Longing and need-based.

Joy

  • Adaptive/Helpful: Genuine relaxation and enjoyment. Deeply savoring the pleasurable or spiritual experience.

  • Maladaptive/Unhelpful: Inauthentic, dissociated, false peacefulness. Exaggerated calmness. Fake smile of serenity on face.

Excitement

  • Adaptive/Helpful: Vital enthusiasm or curiosity. Life energy. Deep interest and involvement. Spirit.

  • Maladaptive/Unhelpful: Manic arousal. Urgency about the experience.

Sexual Desire

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ISTDP Therapy Can Help You

✔️ Slow down and stay in the present moment (rather than the past and future) 

✔️ Become more comfortable with vulnerability and share your feelings and emotions with someone else (rather than alone) 

✔️ Increase access and availability to your emotions and feelings 

✔️ Feel less alone (and more connected with yourself and others you care about)

✔️ Feel more safe in your body (and understand the reactions and ways to manage them) 

✔️ Better understand why you do what you do (to interrupt unhelpful relationship and emotional cycles)

✔️ Create corrective emotional experiences (to heal from past experiences)

✔️ Trust more in others (and trust yourself)

A therapist in a light gray top and navy pants holding a clipboard, taking notes during a session with a patient sitting on a beige sofa in a living room setting.

Healing Is Possible

There is hope.

I’ve worked with many survivors of childhood, attachment, and developmental trauma who now have more peace, joy, freedom in their lives.

I work with survivors of trauma who are now parents who want to parent healthier children and break the cycle of trauma.

I work with therapists and social workers who are wounded healers.

I work with professionals who feel exhausted, overwhelmed, burnt out, and want to take better care of themselves.

I work with individuals who are dating or in relationships and want to create and sustain healthier and more satisfying relationships.

You can feel more joy and peace.

You deserve to have a life where you feel at home not just in your head, but in your body and emotions. You deserve authentic connection and loving relationships with people you trust and care for. 

Reach out today to schedule a consultation.

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Still Have Questions?

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Start Therapy Today

Beginning therapy is the hardest step.

I’m here to make it as easy as possible.

I offer in person therapy in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood Mondays - Thursdays.

I also offer online therapy for residents of California living in Los Angeles as well as the San Francisco Bay Area.

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