Therapy that gets back to nature
Individual, couples, and teen therapy — online, in person, and in nature.
You can explain your patterns perfectly. Can you experience them?
Jordan Muzquiz, Breakfast Table with Jordan and Louis C. Cat, 2026. Selfie on iPhone.
Mountain and Moon, George Nicholas (b. 1955). University Hospital Aintree.
How I See It
The finger pointing at the moon is not the moon herself.
Everything has a nature. Our rage, our analytical mind, a hailstorm, a cat’s tail — the way he swishes it, with style. This is direct experience. This is the moon.
This nature has a reason for being. This includes the unsavory parts of us, the parts we’d rather spit out. And we do. We spit out names, judgements, accusations, shoulds, diagnoses, and repeating arguments.
These are fingers pointing to the moon, pointing to where it hurts. The finger is loaded with assumptions, projections, narratives, stories.
Over time, if repeated enough, these stories, this finger turns to stone, and is accepted permanently as The Truth about us and our world. This accepted Truth serves us, gives us a framework and code to live by. It can also keep us stuck in recurring patterns.
My work centers on getting back to the moon, back to direct experience. It invites individuals and couples back into a deeper encounter of themselves and each other. In this encounter, we stay open, curious, available to what is real, what is true.
Why?
Direct experience is where the life is. It’s where we feel most alive, where we KNOW what we love, where we can sniff out falsehood and truth. The moon is where we can feel our partner’s need for closeness under their bitter snarls. It’s where our lyrics, words, ideas strike that authentic chord that reverberates within ourselves and in the listener.
The moon is where we tune into rhythm, take in the sun’s heat, and light up the night.
Fugai Ekun (1568–c. 1654), Hotei Pointing at the Moon. Edo period. Ink on paper.
Who I Work With
COUPLES
You and your partner are stuck in recurring arguments, hurt feelings, and accusations. Often, under these resentments and lashings are unheard feelings and needs. In our couples work, we slow down the rapid-fire communication to get to the deeper desires that need tending.
Learn more about couples therapy →
INDIVIDUALS
Getting back to nature means getting in touch with your personal nature and the nature of things around you. We are separate beings, and we are connected. We have our own pains and dreams that others will never understand… and…we are part of systems within and outside of ourselves. Together, we can explore what it is you really want, what you’re really after…what is after you. We work with both systems — self and other.
Learn more about individual therapy →
TEENS (FAMILY SYSTEMS)
You’re “the good one,” or “the rebel,” or whatever role got handed to you before you had a say in it. Nobody asked you. Here, you get to talk about you, who you’ve been, and who you want to be. Your privacy and autonomy are respected and held with care.
Learn more about teens therapy →
CREATIVES
You are creatively stuck. Creative pursuits feel superfluous. They always end up at the bottom of the to-do list, a goal set for “after” you accomplish your more pragmatic tasks. You have a backlog of ideas — maybe you’ve even bought the equipment — but haven’t produced your first piece. You’ve created something, but it never feels ready to present or perform. In short, there is resistance.
Learn more about creative recovery →
ENTREPRENEURS
You’re already running something, or you’re building the courage to leave a 9-to-5 and start. Entrepreneurship means testing yourself, failing, and getting back in the fight. Nobody mentions managing your own doubt is basically a part-time job.
Learn more about entrepreneur therapy →
ADVENTURERS (ECOTHERAPY)
You want a break from brick and mortar, from concrete, from the city. With ecotherapy, sessions happen outside, walking among trees, by the water, or on a quiet park bench. It’s a chance to remember what it feels like to be curious and alive to what’s in front of you, falling back in love with nature and, in the process, with your own.
Learn more about ecotherapy →
In Your Corner
Registered Associate Professional Clinical Counselor, APCC20380
Registered Associate Marriage and Family Therapist, AMFT157494
Supervised by Dr. Brian Tierney, PsyD, CA #31502
I hold a Master’s in Clinical Counseling and Marriage and Family Therapy from CIIS and practice under the supervision of Dr. Brian Tierney.
I offer individual and couples therapy with an orientation towards what is emergent in the here and now. I follow where the life is. Where the energy is. Where the love is.
My priority is uncompromised attention and care for you. My nature, love of singing, and musical training can’t help but hear the emotional impression behind what you are saying.
Words are important. I like to write poetry and lyrics. I may use words to make connections through metaphor, childhood, symbolism, and other psychoanalytic and literary means, but this is often secondary to how you sound to me.
I am deeply curious about the world and ask big questions. I also become sincerely excited when connections reveal deeper truths about how we have become who we are.
I’m improvisational and playful in spirit. I see the ability to spontaneously respond to novelty in our environments as a sign of health and vitality! This skill can be honed with clarity of our intentions and values, and with real presence.
By knowing ourselves and being attuned to what is alive, we get to the accurate response quicker, and with more effectiveness.
At my core, I love people and believe we are worth it. I am rooting for us in so many ways. I believe we are loved by nature, and see this in how every animal seems to want to become our companion if given the chance.
We have the chance to companion each other on this planet. What a joy and honor to be in nature’s corner, rooting for it, in all its incarnations.
My Practice
My practice is a combination of an analytical and spontaneous style that routes back to direct experience.
I am trained in psychoanalysis and psychodramatic methods.
The Rebis, from the Rosarium Philosophorum, 1550.
Psychoanalysis brings in Jungian practices, where we work with symbolism, depth analysis, and archetypal understandings of the psyche. In this world, symbols don’t just represent reality, they actively participate in it. Metaphors are the thing itself, recurring in different forms in different contexts throughout history. This modality engages the poetic mind, and can help to break out of stuckness that clings tightly to calcified interpretations of ourselves and others.
Jacob L. Moreno directing a psychodrama session.
Psychodrama is rooted in spontaneity, the here-and-now, and direct experience with whatever is emerging. This means getting in touch with the content of what is being said, as well as visceral sensation and authentic reaction to the encounter of self and the other.
Why this matters?
My experience of analysis without spontaneity is that it is rigid, dry, heady, too clever, and leaps to interpretation before felt understanding. It is all prefrontal cortex without gut and heart.
My experience of spontaneity without analysis is feral, alive, unencumbered, and potentially unstructured. This is the raw horsepower life force, the energy that swells up from the ground, through the spine, and out through Mike Tyson’s punch.
The division is of course not so cut and dry, but in essence, the combination of these practices brings grounded analysis, structure, love of the mind, as well as uninhibited instinct and immediate contact with what many call source.