Object Relations therapists in West Haven, Oregon OR

My work is rooted in a deep interest in how early relational and emotional experience shapes our capacity for self-regulation, connection, desire, and meaning throughout life. I am particularly interested in how people come to know what they need and want, how they learn to express or inhibit those impulses, and what happens when these capacities become conflicted, constricted, or difficult to sustain. Many of the individuals I work with are thoughtful, capable, and outwardly composed, yet internally experience anxiety, low mood, chronic tension or pain, self-criticism, or a sense that something essential is blocked, muted, or inaccessible. These struggles may show up in mood, behavior, the body, or in relationships-including sexuality and intimacy-but they are rarely limited to any one area. Rather, they reflect deeper emotional and relational patterns formed early in life, often before words, that continue to shape how a person approaches closeness, vulnerability, agency, pleasure, and self-expression. My work integrates psychoanalytic psychotherapy, hypnosis, somatic awareness, and clinical sexology within a reflective, depth-oriented process. Hypnosis is used as a central clinical tool to support deeper internal contact and to access emotional, bodily, and unconscious material that can be difficult to reach through conversation alone. I am interested not only in relieving symptoms-such as anxiety, depression, chronic pain, or behavioral patterns-but in helping people develop a more coherent and compassionate relationship with their inner life: their sensations, emotions, impulses, and desires. This work is oriented toward lasting psychological change and greater freedom in how one relates to oneself, one’s body, and one’s capacity for connection, authenticity, and vitality.