Therapists in Evanston, Illinois

I believe therapy works when it gets honest about trade-offs. Every habit you've ever kept gave you something, and pretending otherwise is why so many attempts at change collapse early.

After many years in this chair, I have learned that people rarely need fixing. They need conditions: enough safety, enough honesty, and enough time for what is already in them to surface.

One moment in this work never gets old: a client shrugs at something that used to flatten them, then looks up, surprised by their own shrug. That surprise is exactly what I am in this for.

My view of this work is straightforward: the goal is not to feel better about the loss, it is to be able to carry it without it costing you your entire life. Those are different objectives and confusing them causes a lot of unnecessary suffering.

Will I ever feel normal again? People ask that in the first session more often than any other question, usually having privately concluded that the answer is no and wanting someone to contradict them.

There is a myth that therapy is only for the moments when everything falls apart. In my experience, it is most useful just before that, while you are still holding it all together and paying dearly for the privilege.

I should be straightforward about the limits here. I cannot return anybody to you and I cannot make the next twelve months painless, and if either of those is what you are hoping for then I will disappoint you fairly early on.

I am a therapist for adults whose household is coming apart, whether they instigated it, agreed to it, or had it announced to them. All three positions are difficult in different ways and I have no view about which is hardest.

The single thing I wish new clients knew: anger management is not about feeling less, it is about having options in the exact moment you feel the most. I practice CBT because it respects your time: specific targets, measurable progress, no mystique.