My Therapy Approach
An Integrative, Co-Creative Approach to Therapy, Healing, and Wholeness
Reclaiming your wholeness is not about fixing what’s broken, eliminating parts of who you are, or striving to be someone else. It is about coming back into wholeness—where your thoughts, emotions, body, relationships, and inner strengths can work together rather than against each other.
My approach to therapy is integrative and co-creative. Integration comes not only from finding intersections among various schools of Western psychology, but also from drawing on Eastern contemplative wisdom. It involves helping you find coherence with your internal and external self, your true self and false self. Finally, I help people explore not only their physical or material self, but also their transcendental self—without religious dogma or agenda. Healing, as I understand it, is an active and dynamic process shaped through a collaborative therapeutic partnership grounded in steadiness, curiosity, and trust. More specifically, I draw from neuroscience, trauma-informed care, EMDR, mindfulness, relational psychology, and existential therapy to work with the whole picture of how your life and inner experience have adapted over time—and how those adaptations can gently shift toward greater freedom, balance, and vitality.
How Suffering Develops
People don’t suffer because they are broken as people. Loss and tragedy are part of the human experience, but suffering arises when the overall pattern of a person’s inner life—body, emotions, habits, relationships, and meaning—becomes organized around protecting against that pain.
Humans are created with a deep drive to preserve life, alongside an equally deep longing for connection, meaning, and purpose. When the body and brain sense danger—whether from trauma, relational harm, systemic injustice, chronic stress, emotional pain, or hurtful relationships—they shift into protection mode, often outside of conscious awareness. These threats do not arise only from isolated events, but also from ways people fail one another, and from social structures and systems that neglect, exploit, or devalue human life. In the face of sustained or repeated threat, attention narrows. The body tightens or shuts down. Thoughts loop around worry, control, or escape. These responses are not mistakes; they are learned ways of staying safe.
Over time, when protection becomes the default way of living, what once helped in difficult circumstances can turn into anxiety, numbness, depression, compulsive behaviors, addiction, or ongoing stress. These experiences are not signs of weakness; they reflect how much guarding was once required—often in environments where care, justice, or attuned relationships were insufficient.
When protection has been in place for a long time, the body and mind may remain on alert even when conditions have changed. In these situations, insight or conceptual knowledge alone is often not enough to create change—not because someone is failing, but because their body and mind have learned to prioritize safety over growth, often in response to harm that was not of their making.
When there is little room for steadiness or ease, change tends to stall. This is not a lack of effort or motivation; it reflects that the conditions needed for healing and learning are not fully in place yet. This is where a different kind of support becomes important—one that helps restore balance and stability so growth can unfold naturally.
How Therapy Helps: A Co-Creative Process Toward Healing
From an integrative perspective, therapy is not about forcing change or “getting rid” of symptoms. It is a co-creative process, where therapist and client stay present with what is happening, respond together as things arise, and approach difficult experiences without rushing or pressure. The term “co-creative” means we are moving towards healing together.
Together, we focus on creating the conditions that allow your experience to be explored without overwhelm. I bring clinical experience of deep attention and noticing patterns—both protective and limiting—and help to illuminate them in ways that can be understood and worked with. Protective patterns are respected as meaningful adaptations, while also being thoughtfully and honestly challenged when they no longer support growth. Emotions, bodily sensations, and inner experiences are approached in a steady, engaged way that balances care with meaningful challenge—supporting change without force. The aim is to respectfully integrate the various parts of yourself —the past with the present, the inner with the outer, and the hard to accept with the beautiful.
The therapeutic relationship is an important part of the work. Therapy offers a space where patterns can be explored in real time, supporting new ways of relating to yourself and others that extend beyond the therapy room and into daily life. Over time, your natural process towards healing is harnessed to move towards integration and wholeness.
From Suffering to Flourishing — Reclaiming your wholeness
Reclaiming your wholeness does not mean becoming perfect, fearless, or pain-free. It means becoming more whole, more flexible, and more alive. As protective patterns soften within a supportive, collaborative therapeutic process, people often experience:
More freedom to feel emotions while staying grounded and steady
Greater ability to express your authentic, true self
More flexibility in relationships and daily life
A deeper sense of connection to yourself, others, and the spiritual
Increased capacity to tolerate uncertainty and change
A stronger sense of presence, agency, and vitality
Flourishing, from this perspective, is not the absence of difficulty. It is the capacity to meet life as it is—with resilience, self-compassion, and choice. Wholeness emerges when different parts of you can coexist, communicate, and support one another rather than remain in conflict. This is not simply positive thinking or self-improvement, but a natural human process. When steadiness, collaboration, and compassionate attention are present, people naturally move toward healing, integration, a fuller way of being, and their true self.
Put simply:
Suffering narrows life into protection.
Therapy, as a co-creative process, helps restore the conditions that allow life to widen again.
Reclaiming your wholeness means no longer fighting yourself, and living as your integrated, authentic true self.
Start your own process today!
