Approach

What our work feels like

Therapy is a place where we begin together. I bring my full humanity into the room—willing to explore hard truths with you while keeping things grounded, warm, and real.

How I show up

I am an attentive, collaborative, and thoughtfully direct therapist. I don’t sit in passive silence, nor do I adhere to a generic script. Instead, I bring a grounded honesty to our work, paired with room for nuance, metaphor, and the unspoken fears, desires, and contradictions that make being alive so complex.

In our sessions, I offer my own reflections, name patterns as they surface, and blend depth-oriented psychoanalytic inquiry with pragmatic strategies for daily life. If you arrive looking for someone to hand you a mechanical blueprint or tell you who to be, that’s not how I work. What I do offer is an absolute commitment to thinking alongside you, slowing down, and discovering what genuinely has meaning for your life. Part of this work, and part of life, is learning to tolerate ambiguity rather than rushing toward premature answers.

My focus is to create the conditions where you no longer have to edit or conceal who you are just to be understood.

There is room for your full experience here, especially the messy, unresolved parts. You never need to show up polished. Because therapy is a real relationship, the dynamics that trip you up outside the room will inevitably show up between us. If you pull away when closeness feels risky, intellectualize your pain, or default to taking care of everyone else, that will likely happen here too. When it does, we don’t judge it. We look at it in real time, honor how it once protected you, and practice relating differently.

The armchair in Colin's therapy office, with a soft blue pillow and watercolor art on the walls

What we look at together

A core influence on my work is psychoanalytic psychotherapy, which explores how formative relationships shape how we love, what we desire, what we fear, and what we conceal from ourselves. We start with what is weighing on you right now, and gradually get to what sits underneath it: the subtle, often hidden drives that shape how you see yourself, the world, and the ways you connect.

With couples and in sex therapy, our work may take on a more practical, structured rhythm. In couples work, I draw heavily on the Gottman Method to provide concrete tools—breaking down reactive conflict cycles and practicing reliable ways to de-escalate, listen, and repair. In sex therapy, we pair practical tools with an honest look at what shapes intimacy, desire, and erotic connection.

Lasting change begins when your emotional reality is witnessed and understood, rather than managed away.

In therapy, we get to explore and humanize our imperfections. Change in this work is rarely tidy. We circle back to familiar themes, discovering something clearer each time, until the defenses that once kept you safe lose their grip. Gradually, you learn to let people close without bracing for abandonment, and move through your life with grounded presence and vitality.

Lombard Street winding down the hill, seen from above

Curious what working together might feel like? Let’s talk.

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