Before You Start
Three topics that might help clarify what you're looking for
Cognitive and behavioral skill-building
AI tools show genuine promise in therapies centered on thought patterns, habits, and coping strategies — particularly Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), and behavioral activation. These approaches rely on structured exercises, psychoeducation, and repetition — things AI can deliver consistently, on-demand, and without scheduling constraints.
Think of it as a patient, always-available practice space. AI can help you identify cognitive distortions, guide thought records, prompt mood tracking, and reinforce skills between sessions with a therapist. At this level, the work is largely explicit and skill-based — and AI is reasonably well-suited to support it.
In a randomized controlled trial, participants using an AI chatbot (Woebot) for two weeks showed meaningfully greater reductions in depression symptoms than a control group, averaging over 12 interactions during the study period.
Fitzpatrick, Darcy & Vierhile (2017). JMIR Mental Health. A 2025 systematic review across 10 studies of Woebot, Wysa, and Youper confirmed consistent improvements across AI-CBT platforms (PMC11904749).
Trauma, attachment, imagination, and the inner world
Depth-oriented work — the kind that draws on your inner world of thoughts, sensations, intuitions, images, and personal history — requires something AI cannot offer: a genuine human presence that can track, respond to, and be changed by the encounter with your experience. This is the territory of trauma, attachment, somatic work, and the deeper questions of meaning and identity.
In this kind of therapy, growth does not come from information or skill-building alone. It comes from exploring what truly resonates — through imagination, dreams, the body, and the living relationship between therapist and client. These are dimensions of experience that AI can neither access nor facilitate.
On integration — and why it matters
One of the central goals of depth-oriented therapy is integration: helping a person bring complex internal experiences, states, and parts of themselves into a more coherent and fuller way of being. This is not a cognitive task. It requires a skilled human presence that can sit with contradiction, track the body, work with what is not yet speakable, and support the gradual movement toward wholeness. AI can assist with the surface layer of self-understanding — organizing thoughts, naming patterns — but it cannot facilitate the integration of deep or fragmented internal experience. For that work, the presence of a trained human therapist is not supplementary. It is the work itself.
Attachment & depth work
Altun et al. (2024, Journal of Clinical Medicine) found AI may appeal to those with attachment or trauma histories — but for precisely this reason, AI risks reinforcing avoidance rather than supporting the depth of relational exploration these clients need most.
Clinical judgment & attunement
Kalam et al. (2024, Health Science Reports) documented that AI lacks the diagnostic nuance, professional oversight, and responsive attunement required for work with complex psychological presentations — particularly trauma-informed care.
The emotional & somatic gap
A 2024 PMC review found AI cannot capture the complexity of human emotion, non-verbal cues, somatic signals, or the intuitive responsiveness central to effective depth-oriented therapy. These are not features to be added — they are intrinsic to human encounter.
Trauma processing limits
Research confirms that complex trauma requires the careful, moment-by-moment responsiveness only a human therapist can provide — tracking the nervous system, adjusting approach in real time, and holding space for what is difficult to articulate.
AI can be a meaningful adjunct to cognitive skill-building. For the deeper questions — of who you are, what you carry, and how you grow — that work belongs with a person.
Navigating the outer world
Counseling has a long history — reaching back to the role of trusted advisor to kings and leaders, and forward through the industrial era into how we use the word today. At its heart, a counselor helps someone who is in charge — in this case, in charge of their own life — think clearly and act wisely within it.
The focus is outward. Counseling concerns itself with the practical domain of living: relationships, decisions, habits, communication, and the behavioral choices that shape how we move through the world. It is advisory in nature, rooted in cognition and action, and asks the question: what do you do, and how might you do it differently?
This is valuable, important work. And for many people — those dealing with specific life stressors, transitions, or behavioral patterns they want to shift — it is exactly what is needed.
Transforming the inner world
Therapy — particularly in the depth tradition — begins from a different premise entirely. Rather than asking what you should do, it asks who you are, and what is happening beneath the surface of your experience. Its history runs through the psychology of the unconscious, the relationship between parts of the psyche, and the idea that the inner world has its own logic, its own life.
The work here is transformation. Not just changing behavior, but reorganizing one's internal experience so that something genuinely shifts in how a person knows themselves — and from that new ground, they move through life differently. This includes the body: depth-oriented therapy brings somatic awareness back into relationship with the rest of who you are, so that integration can reach all the way down.
The change that comes from this work is not prescribed. It emerges — from engaging honestly with what is actually there.
Privacy & Woodside
My work with high-profile clients in Seattle taught me something important: privacy isn't just about compliance — it's about how a practice is built. Many of the protections we once relied on are no longer there, so I've done what I can to compensate.
Woodside Members
I am a member at Woodside and do not accept clients who are also members there. This is for your privacy — so that we never encounter each other in a social context that could compromise confidentiality.
Office locations & consultation
I maintain two office locations — one in a professional building, another in a private ADU at my home. This gives you the option of anonymity if that matters to you.
When I need to consult with another professional — a physician, another therapist, a specialist — I share only what's clinically necessary, never identifying details, and never with someone you might encounter. They are bound by HIPAA; I hold myself to a higher standard.
You decide where we land
The state requires I keep some basic information on file. I store nothing digitally — all records are offline, physical, and encoded. Despite what the state requires, I maintain sole control over your Protected Health Information.
A diagnosis exists primarily for insurance or your own use — it is not required for therapy. If you prefer to work without one, we do. If you want to understand what a diagnosis might mean without anything going into your record, that conversation stays between us.
Some clients need detailed records — for FMLA, insurance, or continuity with other providers. Others want minimal documentation. Where we land on that spectrum is entirely your decision. I take this right seriously.
Privacy is not a policy I follow. It's a principle I've built my practice around.
Ready to Start?
Reaching out is not a commitment to begin therapy. I'll be glad to speak with you about where to start and even if therapy is the right place to start.
Reach Out Now