What brings couples to therapy?

• Infidelity and betrayal — rebuilding trust after an affair
• Emotional disconnection and growing apart
• Sexual dissatisfaction or mismatched desire
• Recurring arguments that never seem to resolve
• The impact of pornography or sex addiction on the relationship
• Considering separation — and wanting clarity before deciding
• Strengthening a good relationship before it becomes a struggling one

What is Emotionally Focused Therapy?

Emotionally Focused Therapy is one of the most extensively researched therapeutic approaches in the field, with consistent outcomes across hundreds of studies. I trained and hold certification through isEFT — the International Society for Emotion-Focused Therapy, the international body founded by the originators of the approach.

The key insight of EFT is that most relationship conflict isn't really about the dishes, or money, or sex — it's about attachment. About feeling unseen, unsafe, or alone within the relationship. EFT works by helping couples identify the negative cycle they're stuck in, understand the deeper fears driving it, and create new patterns of reaching for and responding to each other.

What to expect

Sessions are 60–75 minutes and held online via secure video. I typically work with couples over 16–24 sessions, though this varies. We begin with a few individual sessions with each partner before moving to joint work, so I can understand each person's history and perspective.

The first consultation is free and pressure-free — a chance to talk about where you are and whether EFT feels like the right fit.

You don't have to keep this to yourself

Most people who come to me for this work have been carrying it alone for years. They've tried willpower. They've tried shame. Neither has worked — because neither gets to the root of it.

Compulsive pornography use and sexual behavior are rarely about sex. They're usually about regulation — managing anxiety, loneliness, shame, or emotional states that feel uncontrollable in any other way. My work is to help you understand what the behavior is doing for you, and find other ways to meet those needs.

Who I work with

• Individuals struggling with compulsive pornography use
• People whose sexual behavior feels out of control or at odds with their values
• Couples where pornography or infidelity has damaged trust
• Partners of people with sex or pornography addiction
• Men and women in high-pressure careers or public-facing roles

My approach

I work psychodynamically, which means I'm interested in what's underneath the behavior — not just the behavior itself. We'll look at the emotional and relational patterns that feed the cycle, often rooted in early experiences of shame, attachment, or emotional regulation.

This work requires a space of complete confidentiality and zero judgment.

Confidentiality

All sessions are strictly confidential.

What you might recognise

• A persistent doubt in relationships that won’t seem to let go, no matter how much reassurance you receive
• Fear of authority figures — teachers, bosses, mentors, supervisors — particularly those of the same gender as your narcissistic parent
• Dreading certain conversations or interactions, then feeling confused and guilty afterward
• A “complicated” relationship with a parent you can’t quite articulate — you just know something was off
• A harsh inner critic that is relentless, regardless of what you accomplish
• Being judgmental of yourself and others in ways that feel automatic and hard to control
• Difficulty knowing what you want, who you are, or what you actually feel — separate from what others expect of you
• Perfectionism — the sense that being good enough is never quite enough
• Intense anxiety around abandonment and rejection, even in relationships that feel safe

What the therapy involves

This is slow, careful work — because the wounds are old and often pre-verbal. We'll work to understand the family system you grew up in, name what happened (often for the first time), and begin untangling your sense of self from the story you were handed.

A psychodynamic approach is particularly well-suited to this work because it takes seriously the way the past lives in the present — in our bodies, our reactions, our choices of partner, our relationship to our own needs.

On grief

A significant part of this work involves grief — mourning the parent you needed and didn't have, the childhood that should have been different. That grief, when it can finally be felt, is often a profound relief.

The hidden cost of starting over

Expat life looks adventurous from the outside. But the inside experience is often one of profound ambiguity — grief for what you left, uncertainty about where you belong, the exhaustion of performing competence in a culture that isn't quite yours.

Add relationship strain, career transition, or family complexity to that — and it becomes a lot to carry.

Who I work with

• Americans and other expats living in London or elsewhere in Europe
• International professionals navigating identity, career, and relationship pressures
• Couples where partners come from different cultural backgrounds
• People returning home after years abroad and finding it stranger than expected
• Anyone who has moved frequently and struggles to feel rooted

Practical details

I hold US licenses in New York and Texas, and see US-based clients in those states. I see international and UK clients as a consultant. All sessions are available online via secure, encrypted video — across time zones, wherever you are.

I work with clients across the US, UK, Europe, and beyond. If you're not sure whether I can see you in your location, reach out and we'll figure it out together.

Background

I've spent my career working with the things people find hardest to talk about — shame, compulsive behavior, difficult relationships, and the families we come from. Before opening my private practice I worked in forensic clinical settings in New York City. Those years gave me a particular kind of clinical depth — and a deep respect for what it takes to bring the most private parts of your life into a room with another person.

My earlier work included placements at Rikers Island correctional facility, where I provided mental health counseling and assessment.

I am a published researcher in the field of sexual behavior and treatment outcomes, and I am currently pursuing postgraduate studies in Psychoanalytic Studies at Birkbeck, University of London — a reflection of a longstanding commitment to psychoanalytic thinking that has always underpinned my clinical work.

I've lived and practiced across New York, Austin, Mexico, and Portugal — which means I bring both clinical training and genuine personal understanding to working with expats, cross-cultural relationships, and the experience of building a life far from where you started.

Training & credentials

• Postgraduate candidate, Psychoanalytic Studies — Birkbeck, University of London
• M.A. & M.Ed. in Psychological Counselling — Columbia University, New York
• B.A. in Psychology & Criminology — Chatham University, Pittsburgh
• Certified in Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT-C) — International Institute for Emotion-Focused Therapy, Bern
• Licensed Mental Health Counselor — New York State
• Licensed Professional Counsellor — Texas State
• Certified Mediator — University of Texas School of Law
• Published researcher — International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology (2025)

How I work

My primary orientation is psychodynamic, which means I'm more interested in understanding the roots of a problem than in offering quick techniques for managing it. I work collaboratively — your goals matter, and we'll define them together.

I'm direct. I'll gently challenge what I observe. And I believe the therapeutic relationship itself — the space between us — is one of the most powerful instruments of change we have.

Cognitive-behavioral therapy has been the de facto therapy modality of the last two decades. Every BetterHelp advertisement you hear on a podcast will invariably contain "CBT." CBT became the dominant approach because of its promising efficacy demonstrated in thousands of studies, and its appeal to insurance companies — it's time-bound, prescriptive, and structured.

CBT has shown promising results for anxiety and depression. It reduces acute symptoms including depressive episodes, worrying, and panic attacks. But interestingly, almost all of that can also be said about psychoanalysis — though it gets far less attention.

One of the most cited meta-analyses on treatment efficacy published in the last decade found that therapeutic modality did not matter nearly as much as the relationship itself between client and therapist. This idea is actually germane to psychoanalysis — and it's why companies like BetterHelp, which offer a faceless texting service, chose CBT. If the relationship doesn't matter, you can strip it out entirely. But good outcomes from therapy rarely come from simply teaching someone a tip.

At its core, CBT hedges on the assertion that most dysfunction arises from negative thought patterns. Psychoanalysts ask a different question entirely — not "how do I help this client be less anxious?" but "what does this anxiety mean for this person?" and "why are they behaving this way?"

In the years I have spent practicing psychotherapy, I have found that almost every time someone is in distress, the why is more important than the how. A therapist who simply offers information or suggests solutions is likely wasting time. What most people need is a therapist who is genuinely interested in understanding them — not just managing their symptoms.

So is it surprising that psychoanalysis is making a comeback? The practice has received heavy criticism over the years — for its exclusionary history, its high cost, its association with the European upper class. But traditional Freudian analysis is only one form of psychoanalysis. There is also psychodynamic psychotherapy, which in practice combines psychoanalytic theory with more modern approaches — and which is increasingly what thoughtful clinicians are turning to.

Many of the core tenets of psychoanalytic theory hold up — the power of the unconscious, the importance of the therapeutic relationship, the function of defense mechanisms. These ideas have helped me understand people far more than simply asking them what thoughts make them anxious. CBT isn't going anywhere. But perhaps we were too quick to write off psychoanalysis.

Do you strategize about how to keep your partner close? Do you feel anxious when things are going well? Over-analyze your partner's behavior to the extent that it makes it hard to feel present in your relationship?

The above may indicate an anxious attachment style — though many people with secure attachments also experience abandonment anxiety associated with closeness and intimacy. If you overthink, contemplate disaster, and feel anxious in relationships, it's likely that what you are actually fearing is loss. Intense fear of loss and separation is often associated with a history of neglect or emotional unavailability in childhood. Even if your experience does not include a history of trauma, you are probably familiar with the gut-wrenching dread that comes when we feel rejected.

Fear of abandonment involves thinking the worst. Rather than imagining a relationship growing closer and more fulfilling, people who fear abandonment contemplate all the ways their attachment could be destroyed. In working with many clients with anxious attachment, here are some of the most useful approaches I've found.

Learn to regulate yourself first

This is one of the most powerful tools for handling relationship anxiety. Before reaching for your partner for reassurance, ask yourself what you can do to regulate your anxious response in the moment. Go for a walk, call a friend, exercise — anything to interrupt the rumination before it becomes an action you regret.

Own your feelings rather than projecting them

It's easy to assume that our partners are feeling the same way we are. Many couples project emotions onto each other without realizing it. "I'm feeling anxious" translates to "You are trying to leave me." Accusations breed defensiveness, which breeds conflict. Your emotions are valid — and your partner is not responsible for your emotional wellbeing.

Imagine the worst-case scenario — deliberately

Often the worst case is "I would lose my partner." But most of us have gone through a loss and got through it. For a moment, picture what life would look like. Where would you live? How would you spend your time? The goal is not to ruminate but to remind yourself that the worst case is survivable — and that you are more capable than your anxiety tells you.

Have the conversation — and know what you want from it

One of the best ways to cope with fear of abandonment is to have an open conversation with your partner. Understand what you are hoping to gain before you begin. If you are looking for reassurance, ask for it directly. Sometimes it feels comforting enough simply to verbalize anxiety and move on.

In therapist jargon we have something called "self-disclosure" — the therapeutic technique of sharing something personal in session. The goal is often to build rapport, or to universalize a client's experience. When done incorrectly it can make clients feel awkward or, worse, unheard.

Years ago, when I worked for a private practice, one of the things a client shared with me when I left was that while he felt our work together was very helpful, he had realized in our last session that he had "no idea" who I was as a person. Since then I have tried to bring more of myself into the room with clients.

I've been pondering my relationship with my own therapist — who is also a colleague — and how our work ended. One of the hardest things to do is end a therapeutic relationship, even when the time has come. I detest goodbyes and have a hard time letting go of people, and the way I left therapy is a clear reflection of that.

I discovered a relationship pattern of mine that played out in real time while I was in therapy — one I did not want to face. I've learned that anything my therapist said that really bothered me, or that I felt was wrong, had at least a kernel of truth in it. This is not to say therapists are always right. But my therapist did see things that even I was reluctant to admit to myself.

I learned that so much of relationships comes down to simply stating what you want and what you feel — regardless of how the other person reacts. I feared her judgment. But more importantly, I didn't trust my own. She taught me, again and again, to trust myself.

I learned it's hard to get anything out of therapy if you're not consistent. I learned that avoidance takes active effort to combat. And I learned that no therapist, no matter how astute, can read your mind or know what you want more than you do.

Almost all of us use the term "OCD" colloquially — and yet few people understand the difference between having an intrusive thought and living with a diagnosable condition. If you've ever wondered whether you have OCD, you're not alone.

What is OCD?

Obsessive-compulsive disorder can manifest differently depending on how symptoms present. For a diagnosis, a person must experience either obsessions or compulsions — or both — and these must be significantly time-consuming and cause clinically significant distress or impairment in functioning.

Some people with OCD only suffer from obsessive thoughts and don't experience compulsions. Compulsions are repetitive, ritual-like behaviors that feel out of one's control — hand-washing, counting, checking, repeating words. Often compulsions are related to obsessions.

Sometimes obsessions are sexual in nature and include taboo images that cause significant distress. These thoughts foster intense shame — and yet they are often entirely at odds with the person's actual desires. OCD is an ego-dystonic disorder, meaning symptoms conflict with a person's values and wishes. The emotional toll is profound and exhausting. Thankfully, there are highly effective evidence-based treatments.

What differentiates an intrusive thought from OCD?

Most people have had a fleeting, unwanted thought — an impulse on a subway platform, a dark image that passes. For someone without OCD, the thought passes when the moment does. For someone with OCD, the thought doesn't leave. The desire to push it away intensifies alongside it.

Intrusive thoughts tend to increase when anxiety or depression is present. If you notice them more than usual, reflect on life stressors — burnout, relationship difficulty, major transition. These are all known triggers.

How to find relief

Cognitive-behavioral therapy and exposure/response prevention therapy have consistently been found to treat OCD effectively. In the meantime: try confronting the impulse head-on rather than avoiding it. Practice acceptance — instead of pushing the thought away, allow it in and breathe through it. Focus on something that demands your full attention. And remember that intrusive thoughts are incredibly common. They do not reveal who you are.

The word "narcissist" gets used a lot. But growing up with a parent who is genuinely narcissistic — or emotionally immature, or unable to see you as a separate person with separate needs — leaves a very particular kind of mark. One that tends to show up most clearly not in childhood, but in adult life.

What narcissistic parenting actually looks like

Narcissistic parenting isn't always dramatic. It doesn't always involve obvious cruelty or neglect. More often it looks like a parent who needed you to reflect well on them. Who was warm when you were achieving and cold when you weren't. Who made their emotional state your responsibility. Who couldn't tolerate your separateness — your different opinions, different feelings, different desires.

The message, delivered in a thousand small ways, was: your job is to manage me. Your feelings come second.

How it shows up in adult life

Children who grew up this way often become extraordinarily attuned to other people. They are perceptive, empathic, often high-achieving. They learned early to read the room, anticipate needs, and make themselves useful. These are genuine strengths — but they come at a cost.

• Difficulty knowing what you want, separate from what others expect of you
• A persistent sense of not being enough — however much you achieve
• Perfectionism that feels less like ambition and more like survival
• A mind that won't stop questioning — your choices, your relationships, whether what you're feeling is even real
• Intense guilt or anxiety when you set a boundary or say no
• Relationships that feel painfully familiar in ways you can't quite explain
• A harsh inner critic that sounds, if you listen carefully, like a parent

What the therapy involves

This is slow, careful work — because the wounds are old and often formed before you had language for them. Therapy in this area involves understanding the family system you grew up in, naming what happened, and beginning to untangle your sense of self from the story you were handed.

A significant part of the work involves grief — mourning the parent you needed and didn't have, the childhood that should have been different. That grief, when it can finally be felt, is often a profound relief.

If you've been looking into couples therapy, you've probably come across the term "EFT." Emotionally Focused Therapy is one of the most extensively researched approaches to couples work in existence — and one of the most misunderstood.

What EFT actually is

EFT was developed as a way of understanding what goes wrong in intimate relationships — and how to fix it at the level where it actually matters. The core insight is that most relationship conflict isn't really about the dishes, or money, or sex. It's about attachment. About feeling unseen, unsafe, or alone within the relationship.

When we feel disconnected from our partner, most of us react in one of two ways: we pursue — escalating, demanding, criticizing, trying to force a response. Or we withdraw — going quiet, shutting down, making ourselves unavailable. These reactions make perfect sense from an attachment perspective. But they tend to trigger the opposite response in our partner, creating a cycle that becomes harder and harder to escape.

EFT works by helping couples identify the negative cycle they're stuck in, understand the deeper fears driving it, and create new patterns of reaching for — and responding to — each other.

Does it work?

EFT has one of the strongest evidence bases of any couples therapy modality. Studies consistently show significant improvement not just during treatment but sustained years later. This is unusual in psychotherapy research — most treatments show regression over time. EFT's outcomes hold.

That said, EFT is not a quick fix. It typically requires 16–24 sessions, and the early stages can feel slow — we're working at the level of attachment patterns that formed long before this relationship began. Couples who stay with the process consistently report that something fundamental shifted — not just in how they communicate, but in how they feel about each other.

Who it's for

EFT works for couples at many different stages — those in acute crisis, those who have gradually grown apart, and those who simply want to deepen a relationship that's already functioning well. It works for couples navigating infidelity, sexual dissatisfaction, and the aftermath of betrayal. It also works for couples who can't identify a single presenting problem but know something essential is missing.

The one thing that predicts outcome more than anything else is willingness — both partners need to be genuinely invested in the process, even if that investment starts small.