The same argument. Different people.
For adults who can see the pattern clearly — and still can't change it from the inside. Depth-oriented relational therapy for exactly that bind.
Free 15-min · In-person Palo Alto or telehealth ·
“It is a joy to be hidden, and disaster not to be found.”— D.W. Winnicott
That's the core of most relational suffering: the person who became so practiced at being found in the ways others required, they lost track of where they'd hidden themselves. Relational therapy is, at its heart, an act of finding — being genuinely seen by another, and discovering that what's found can be held.
Plato told a story: that humans were once whole, split in two by the gods who feared their power. We've been searching for the other half ever since — and when we find someone who seems like it, we bring everything we are, and everything we fear, into the room with them. No relationship is only about the two people in it. It's also about all the relationships that came before, still speaking.
Relational patterns don't require another person in the room to work on. You may recognize some of this:
The same dynamic keeps appearing: different people, different context, essentially the same choreography.
You can see the pattern clearly from the outside. That doesn't make it easier to change from the inside.
Intimacy is simultaneously what you want most and what makes you most anxious.
You either lose yourself in relationships or keep people at a careful distance. Sometimes both, with different people.
The moments when relationships rupture — or go cold — follow a script you didn't write and can't quite revise.
You know how you want to show up. The gap between who you are in your head and who you are under pressure is painful.
“We need to recover the sense that each life is worth telling, that each person is the central figure in a story that is being revealed.” — James Hillman Relational work begins there: with the conviction that your particular patterns, your particular history of connection and rupture, are worth serious, unhurried attention.
Object relations theory helps explain why relational patterns are so persistent: each of us carries an internal model of relationship — a template formed in early relational experiences, a set of expectations about what happens when we need something, when we are disappointed, when we feel unseen. These templates activate in intimate relationships in ways they don't activate elsewhere.
The person who “always” dismisses your concerns is doing something that hits a nerve formed long before they arrived. The rage that seems disproportionate to the event is often proportionate to the accumulated weight of all the similar events that preceded it. Understanding this doesn't excuse the behavior — it makes the pattern legible. And what is legible can change.
Relational therapy is, at its core, an act of finding — being genuinely seen by another, and discovering that what's found can be held.
This is the orientation of depth-oriented therapy: not to fix, manage, or optimize — but to understand what has been organized inside, and make contact with it.
“Tragedy is partly a matter of where a story ends.”— Erving Polster
Most people who come to relational therapy aren't at an ending. They're at a place where the story could go either way — and they've had enough self-awareness to arrive before the decision is made for them. That's not nothing. It's the most useful thing you can bring.
Relational therapy works because the therapeutic relationship itself is a live example of the very patterns we're studying. What happens between us in session — how I respond, how you respond, where contact is made and where it is avoided — is real data about how you move in relationships. This is more useful than talking about relationships abstractly.
The moment before the habitual response — the pause in which something different becomes possible — gradually widens.
Intimacy becomes less threatening when you have more access to your own ground. You can be fully present without disappearing.
When the relational template becomes visible — not just as a pattern but as a story about what had to happen to survive — its grip loosens.
A brief conversation about what's been happening — one sentence is enough. Nothing is assumed from it.
An unhurried intake. Your history, what brings you here, how you make sense of things.
Regular 50-minute sessions, in-person in Palo Alto or via telehealth throughout California.
This is one of the areas I work with in individual therapy.
How individual therapy works →
I work with relational patterns in both individual and couples therapy. My own experience of long-term psychotherapy gave me an embodied understanding of how relational templates form, how they protect, and how they change.
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Yes. Individual therapy is often the most effective route for working on relational patterns. Your internal model of relationship is present and available regardless of who else is in the room.
Yes. For couples work, see the couples therapy page. Individual relational therapy and couples work are different modalities — we can discuss which would be most useful for your situation.
Intellectual understanding rarely changes an established relational pattern. What changes it is a different experience — in real time, in relationship. That's what therapy provides.
Yes — in-network with Aetna, Wellfleet, and Stanford SHIP. Superbills for other PPO plans.
That awareness is itself significant — and a reason to begin rather than a reason for shame. The patterns you're carrying are older than your current relationships. Working with them is one of the most meaningful things you can do.
Relationship Therapy · Palo Alto
A free 15-minute consultation is a good first step.
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