Clinical Specialties: Trauma, BPD, Dissociation

While I work with a broad range of concerns, certain areas represent particular depth of training, experience, and interest. These specialties reflect not just clinical competence, but a genuine commitment to understanding the particular struggles these conditions involve.

My approach to all these areas is informed by psychodynamic thinking—an orientation toward understanding the meaning of symptoms, the unconscious processes that shape our experience, and the relational patterns that developed in response to early environments.

Personality Disorders

Personality disorders represent some of the most challenging and rewarding areas of clinical work. These conditions involve longstanding patterns in how one relates to self and others—patterns that often developed as adaptations to early relational environments but now create suffering.

I have particular expertise in Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), trained in both Mentalization-Based Treatment (MBT) and Transference-Focused Psychotherapy (TFP). These are evidence-based approaches specifically designed for personality pathology, focusing on developing the capacity to understand one’s own and others’ mental states, and on working through the relational patterns that emerge in the therapeutic relationship itself.

I also work with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Avoidant Personality Disorder, and other personality configurations. The common thread is a focus on understanding the internal world—how identity is organized, how affects are regulated, and how relationships are experienced.

Learn About BPD Treatment

Specialized Training

Mentalization-Based Treatment (MBT)
Transference-Focused Psychotherapy (TFP)
Object-relations theory
Kernberg’s structural approach

Trauma Takes Many Forms

Childhood abuse and neglect
Complex developmental trauma
Sexual assault
Accidents and medical trauma
Witnessing violence
Relational and attachment trauma
Intergenerational trauma

Trauma

Trauma is not simply an event that happened—it’s an experience that overwhelmed your capacity to process and integrate what occurred. The effects of trauma live on in the body, in implicit memory, in patterns of relating, and in the way you experience yourself and the world.

I work with trauma from a psychodynamic perspective, attending to how traumatic experiences shaped your internal world and your relationships. This means understanding not just what happened, but how you made sense of it, how it became woven into your identity, and how it continues to influence your present life.

Healing from trauma is not about forgetting or “moving on”—it’s about integration. It’s about developing the capacity to hold painful experiences within a broader sense of self, to metabolize what was once overwhelming, and to build new relational experiences that gradually revise old expectations.

Mood Disorders

Depression and bipolar disorder involve profound disruptions in how one experiences oneself, others, and the future. While medication is often helpful, psychotherapy offers something medications cannot: an opportunity to understand what your mood symptoms mean, what function they serve, and how patterns of thought, feeling, and relating maintain or exacerbate them.

Depression

Depression often involves more than low mood—it can include profound emptiness, loss of meaning, harsh self-criticism, and withdrawal from life. From a psychodynamic perspective, depression frequently involves aggression turned inward, unmetabolized loss, or an internal relationship with a critical, abandoning, or disappointed object.

Therapy explores the internal dynamics that maintain depression, the relational patterns that reinforce it, and the possibilities for a different relationship with oneself.

Bipolar Disorder

Bipolar disorder involves cycling between states that can feel like different versions of the self. Psychotherapy helps you understand the patterns and triggers of your cycles, develop strategies for managing episodes, and integrate the different aspects of your experience into a coherent sense of identity.

I work collaboratively with prescribers to ensure that psychotherapy and medication management support each other.

Learn More About Mood Disorder Treatment

Anxiety Disorders

Anxiety is one of the most common reasons people seek therapy, yet its roots are often deeper than they first appear. While anxiety can certainly be managed through behavioral techniques and medication, lasting change often requires understanding what the anxiety is about—what dangers it anticipates, what losses it guards against, what conflicts it expresses.

I work with generalized anxiety, panic disorder, social anxiety, phobias, and health anxiety. In each case, the goal is not simply symptom reduction but genuine understanding: Why does your psyche sound the alarm in these particular situations? What does the anxiety protect you from knowing or feeling? What would it mean to live without this particular defense?

“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.”

— Joseph Campbell

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

OCD involves intrusive thoughts, images, or urges that cause intense distress, followed by compulsive behaviors or mental rituals aimed at reducing that distress. The content of obsessions can be disturbing and shameful, leading many people to hide their struggles for years.

Effective treatment for OCD typically includes Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), which I integrate with psychodynamic understanding. While behavioral work addresses the symptom cycle directly, understanding the meaning of your particular obsessions—why your mind generates these specific fears—can deepen and consolidate gains.

OCD often reflects deeper conflicts: about aggression, sexuality, responsibility, or the impossibility of certainty. Exploring these dimensions doesn’t replace behavioral treatment, but enriches it.

Common OCD Themes

Contamination and cleaning
Harm to self or others
Symmetry and ordering
Religious or moral scrupulosity
Sexual or taboo thoughts
Relationship obsessions
“Just right” feelings

Complex Grief

Grief is a natural response to loss, but sometimes the grieving process becomes stuck or complicated. Complex grief may involve an inability to accept the reality of the loss, persistent yearning, bitterness or anger, difficulty moving forward, or a sense that life is meaningless without the deceased.

Psychodynamic therapy is particularly suited to grief work because it attends to the internal relationship with the lost person—how they live on inside you, what their death meant, what conflicts or unfinished business remain, and how to find a new relationship with them as someone who has died rather than someone who is simply absent.

I also work with disenfranchised grief: losses that aren’t socially recognized or validated, such as the death of an ex-partner, a pet, a pregnancy, or a relationship that ended before the person died. These losses deserve space and acknowledgment.

Existential Concerns

Not all suffering fits neatly into diagnostic categories. Some of the most profound struggles involve the fundamental conditions of human existence: mortality, freedom, isolation, and the question of meaning.

Questions of Meaning

Why am I here? What should I do with my life? Is there any point to any of this? These are not symptoms to be treated but questions to be lived. Therapy can provide a space to explore them seriously.

Confronting Mortality

Awareness of death can provoke anxiety, despair, or a radical reexamination of priorities. Working through death anxiety often leads to a more authentic relationship with life.

Freedom and Responsibility

The recognition that you are free to choose, and responsible for those choices, can be both liberating and terrifying. Therapy helps you engage with this freedom without being paralyzed by it.

Isolation and Connection

Each of us is ultimately alone in our experience, yet we long for genuine connection. Therapy itself becomes a space where this paradox can be held and explored.

Conditions I Treat

Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)
Other Specified Dissociative Disorder
Depersonalization/Derealization
Dissociative Amnesia
Trauma-related dissociation

Dissociative Disorders

Dissociation is the mind’s way of surviving what would otherwise be unbearable. These conditions—including DID, depersonalization, derealization, and dissociative amnesia—are frequently misunderstood and misdiagnosed, often for years.

I provide specialized, phase-oriented treatment that respects the protective function of dissociation while working toward integration and reconnection. Treatment moves at your system’s pace, prioritizing safety and stabilization before any trauma processing.

Learn About Dissociative Disorder Treatment

Psychotic Disorders

Psychotic disorders carry tremendous stigma, but the reality is that many people with schizophrenia and related conditions live meaningful, productive lives with appropriate treatment. Recovery is not only possible—it’s common.

I provide psychotherapy that complements psychiatric medication, focusing on understanding the meaning of psychotic experiences, rebuilding identity and relationships, and developing a life worth living beyond symptom management. I work collaboratively with psychiatrists to ensure coordinated care.

Learn About Psychotic Disorder Treatment

Conditions I Treat

Schizophrenia
Schizoaffective Disorder
Brief Psychotic Disorder
Psychosis in other conditions

Signs You May Benefit

Previous treatments haven’t worked
Multiple conflicting diagnoses
Symptoms that don’t fit one category
Labeled “treatment resistant”

Complex & Difficult-to-Diagnose Conditions

Not everyone fits neatly into diagnostic categories. I specialize in complex presentations: conditions that have been missed or misdiagnosed, symptoms that don’t fit the textbook, and situations where multiple diagnoses overlap and interact.

If you’ve struggled for years without clear answers, received multiple conflicting diagnoses, or been labeled “treatment resistant,” the problem may not be you—it may be that you haven’t received accurate diagnosis and appropriate treatment. Comprehensive evaluation can illuminate the path forward.

Learn About Diagnostic Complexity

Additional Areas of Practice

Beyond these specialties, I also work with:

If you’re unsure whether your concerns fall within my areas of expertise, please reach out. I’m happy to discuss whether I might be a good fit or to provide referrals to colleagues whose specialties better match your needs.

Clinical Specialties