IN-PERSON AND ONLINE THROUGHOUT MISSOURI
Psychodynamic Psychotherapy
in St. Louis
Understanding the pattern is how you finally change it.
YOU ALREADY KNOW EVERYTHING IN THE USUAL BAG OF TRICKS. AND THEY DON’T WORK FOR YOU.
You’ve tried 4-7-8 breathing, journaling, downloading meditation apps, and focusing on your sleep. You’ve read all the books about habits for being highly effective, and you’ve studied up on becoming 10% Happier.
Some of those things may have helped for a bit. But when life gets stressful again, all that goes out the window and you’re right back in the same place. And you know you're doing it (that's what makes it so frustrating).
You don’t need more coping skills—you’ve tried them all. You need to finally understand why these patterns keep taking over.
YOU MAY BE SOMEONE WHO:
Has started to wonder if the conflicts in your relationships—at work and at home—happen because there’s something you’re doing wrong that you need to fix.
Has been living with cycles of depression or anxiety long enough to know how to manage them temporarily, but wants to understand why they keep coming back.
Gets anxious the moment someone seems annoyed or disappointed in you, even when you can clearly see you've done nothing wrong—and wants to understand why other people's moods have such a hold on you.
Has a hard time identifying what you feel and saying it out loud. You have ideas about what’s getting in your way but you want more clarity.
Has the sense something from your past keeps showing up in your present relationships or family life and wants to understand the connection.
Is genuinely curious about how your own mind works and drawn to a process where you get to follow your own curiosity rather than check off a list.
These are patterns with a source we can uncover.
WHAT IS PSYCHODYNAMIC PSYCHOTHERAPY?
Psychodynamic psychotherapy helps you understand what's behind the patterns you keep repeating.
My approach sits between structured therapy and open-ended support: We won't follow worksheets or assign weekly homework, but we also won't spend our sessions shooting the breeze. The work stays focused on what brought you here, and we keep returning to it until you understand it well enough to change it.
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Think of it like driving a car: You’re not consciously saying to yourself: I am putting the key in the ignition. I am looking in my rearview mirror. Now I am putting the car in reverse. Now I am backing it out.
You just do it.
A lot of how you operate in life and relationships works the same way. It’s automatic, outside your awareness, and often based on experiences in your past. These patterns developed for a reason, but they may not be helping you anymore. Psychodynamic therapy helps to uncover them so you can understand them, see where they came from, and begin to choose differently.
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Together, we'll slow down and reflect on whatever issues you bring into the session. That might mean looking at the feelings you tend to push aside, or the ways your history still shows up in your actions today.
We also pay close attention to what happens between us in the room. The way you relate to me tends to mirror the way you relate to others. If we can catch and reflect on those interactions in real time, we can actively work to stop the pattern as we see it playing out.
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This isn't a quick-fix approach. It's a steady process for people who want to slow down long enough to understand themselves honestly.
We’ll take our time with the issues you came in with and the changes you want to make. The goal is to understand yourself well enough to see the pattern as it's happening and choose differently, with less and less need for therapy over time.
Psychodynamic therapy can help you…
Understand that depression, anxiety, and relationship struggles are not random, and learn to recognize the patterns, triggers, and past experiences that may be behind them.
See yourself with more compassion, so the parts of you that feel reactive, conflicted, avoidant, angry, or unsure become easier to understand and work with.
Use strong emotions as information, rather than feeling controlled by them or ashamed of having them.
Notice your patterns as they happen in your daily life, so you can pause, reflect, and choose a different response instead of reacting automatically.
Build more confidence in your own needs, instincts, boundaries, and decisions, especially in relationships with partners, parents, siblings, bosses, or children.
Move through life with more presence, energy, meaning, and freedom, so the past has less power over how you relate to yourself and the people who matter most.
PSYCHODYNAMIC PSYCHOTHERAPY IN ST. LOUIS
Your patterns aren’t your personality.
Let’s change the beliefs and behaviors holding you back so you can live a life you love.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
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Most approaches work at the surface, which can be useful, but it doesn't always address what's underneath them. Psychodynamic therapy is interested in uncovering where the pattern came from and what keeps it going. The change tends to hold longer because it comes from self-directed insight rather than a hard-and-fast technique.
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This isn't a short-term approach. Unlike some methods with a set number of sessions, psychodynamic therapy is open-ended by design, which means we work until you feel satisfied.
If you're looking for a time-limited intervention, this probably isn't the right fit.
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Not exactly. We go to the past only as far as it helps explain the present. If you had a difficult relationship with a parent that still affects how you respond to authority, or a dynamic from your family growing up that still plays out in your relationships now, that's worth understanding. What we're really working to uncover is how your history shaped the patterns you're dealing with today, so those patterns lose their grip.
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That's one of the more common things I hear. A lot of people have had experiences with therapy that felt more like venting or doing homework than actually getting somewhere. Psychodynamic therapy is more active than that. I'm listening closely for what's running underneath what you're saying, and willing to push back when something seems worth looking at more carefully. Whether it's a better fit than what you've tried before depends on what you need. If you want to talk through it, we can do that in a consultation.
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That’s fine! Most weeks you'll start with whatever's been on your mind. I can prompt you if needed. You may find that once you get started, it’s easy to keep going. Many of my clients come alive doing this work because they genuinely enjoy the act of self-reflection.
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No. Psychodynamic therapy is well-suited for people who are functioning fine on the outside but sense that something keeps getting in the way of fully thriving. That might mean recurring depression or anxiety, or patterns in relationships that don't change no matter how hard you try. You don't have to be falling apart to benefit from understanding yourself more clearly.
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I’m a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with more than a decade of experience providing therapy, along with advanced training in psychoanalytic, relational, trauma-informed, and evidence-based approaches.
I earned my Master of Social Work from Loyola University Chicago in 2011 and am licensed in Missouri and Ohio. I completed a Two-Year Advanced Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Certificate through the St. Louis Psychoanalytic Institute in 2022 and Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy Pre-Core Training in 2025.
I have also completed training in the relational treatment of trauma, participated in an advanced trauma consultation group for several years, and received training in evidence-based assessment and treatment of PTSD in adults.
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Psychodynamic psychotherapy may be a good fit if you want to understand why you keep repeating the same patterns, not simply learn a few tools for managing them when they appear.
You may be drawn to this approach if you are curious about your own mind, willing to slow down, and interested in looking at what is happening underneath the problem. Maybe you already know you have a tendency to choose the wrong partners, avoid conflict, overthink decisions, struggle to prioritize yourself, or get anxious when someone seems disappointed in you. You want to know why you do that.
It is probably not the right fit if you want a highly structured treatment with worksheets, weekly homework, session agendas, or direct advice about what to do. It also may not be the best fit if you want to come every other week, stay on the surface, or get in and get out as quickly as possible.
For psychodynamic psychotherapy to be effective, the work needs enough consistency and patience for us to see the patterns as they happen, understand where they came from, and help you build more freedom in how you respond.