I do not believe most people fit cleanly within most diagnoses. I also do not work from an over-pathologizing or diagnosis first approach. Labels are incredibly limiting. Yes, sometimes they are also life saving.

What’s more important:

You are living life better, you are improving socially, relationally, existentially.

Relational therapy might work for someone with “people pleasing tendencies” but someone might be neurodivergent and need a more structured approach.

I am flexible in my treatment style when it is called for, and flexibility is often called for. Two people can be struggling with something similar and yet need two entirely different approaches. You also could have major success working with a “diagnosis” in one person - and less with the other even with the same “approach” due to an individual’s motivation level to be in therapy.

Here’s the intention:

My intention is to to be less “yeah, I have the solutions for everyone, and therapy goes exactly this way for these things” (Spoiler Alert: that would be ridiculous) and more- “how can I give someone an idea of my strengths and how I think so they can best determine if they’d like to work with me?”

At the same time, you are in yellow flag territory (caution territory) if you find a provider that professes to be interested equally in everything.

Listing 30 specializations or highly specific interests wouldn’t make sense. The pretense to be a specialist in everything renders the word specialist as meaningless.

I prefer humanistic, psychoanalytic and relational work over behavioral work by a significant degree, and I have developed some preferences along the way. This doesn’t make me limited to these preferences.

Psychoanalysis is a means of looking at the unconscious, attachment patterns, major development, and family patterns. It’s the bedrock of most therapy.

Psychodynamic is more accessible psychoanalytic therapy as psychaoanlysis is usually 3-5x a week and can last years. Psychodynamic therapy can be once a week and is generally more accessible.

Therapy is a container where your relational patterns out in the real world come to life in the therapeutic sense.

I also think the relationship between the therapist and client is critical. and is a window into the problems and even strengths you have outside of the therapy room.

Dialectical behavior therapy is a means of holding the dialectic, or two truths, or two conflicting beliefs. It’s often used to treat borderline personality or other behaviors.

DBT doesn’t need to be exclusive to treating borderline personality and is great for distress tolerance and mindfulness, and cognitive dissonance in general.

Everyone has different layers of identity.

I work with people who have faced systemic trauma, racial trauma, and discrimination in many settings, including within their families, communities, workplaces, and other relationships.

Intersectionality is a way of understanding how different aspects of a person’s identity overlap and interact. The concept of intersectionality was developed by black feminist scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw.

Basically, you have many different layers: your race, your gender, mental health, class, sexuality, where you’re from, etc. These create different layers of privilege and oppression that interact. The interaction is important to consider, and no one is simply “oppressed,” “privileged,” or “marginalized.”

This interaction contributes to your mental health and how you show up. Having a provider who can see those layers is critical to their understanding of you.