Individual & Couples Therapy in NYC
I offer psychodynamic therapy for individuals and couples in Manhattan. The work centers on the emotional and relational patterns underneath what brought you here, and where they came from. Sessions are 45 minutes, weekly, and some people meet twice a week. Below are the areas I work in most deeply, how that looks in individual and couples work, and the concerns that come up most often.
Specialty Areas
- Children of Immigrants & Asian American Identity -- Therapy for adult children of immigrants and Asian Americans, focused on intergenerational trauma, family dynamics, and identity.
- Late-Diagnosed Neurodivergence -- Therapy for late-diagnosed ADHD and autistic adults, focused on masking, burnout, and the identity shift that follows a diagnosis.
- Couples Therapy -- Couples therapy focused on conflict cycles, communication, and how each partner’s family history shapes the relationship.
Individual Therapy
Individual therapy is a space to explore the emotional and relational patterns shaping your daily life. Many people come to therapy with something specific: anxiety that won’t go away, a decision that they cannot make, or relationships that end up going the same way. Therapy is a chance to slow down and examine what drives these internal pressures.
Sessions are unstructured in the sense that there is no agenda set in advance. You talk about what is present, and we follow it, and often what seems like a small thing turns out to connect to something much older. Over time those connections become clearer, and the pattern underneath them starts to be visible while it is happening rather than afterward.
We focus on both what is happening in your life now and the deeper patterns that influence it. While we work with your current relationships, emotions, and inner world, we also explore how family-of-origin experiences and cultural and societal expectations continue to shape these present-day dynamics. The goal is to understand how your history informs your current choices and reactions.
This work is reflective and exploratory. It focuses on developing a clear understanding of your patterns so that change can emerge from insight rather than effort. Therapy can support greater emotional clarity, self-understanding, and a stronger sense of agency in your life.
Couples Therapy
Most couples come to therapy not because of one dramatic event, but because of the accumulation: the same argument on repeat, a distance that crept into the relationship without either of you noticing, the sense that you care deeply for each other and yet that care does not seem to land when you actually talk.
In sessions, we slow down what happens between you in real time, how you communicate, how conflict escalates, and what each of you feels when tension rises. We also look at how each partner’s family history and earliest relationship templates continue to shape the present. The goal is not to decide who is right, but to understand the cycle you are caught in together.
Common Concerns
Anxiety
Ruminating thoughts, spirals that are hard to get out of, or the sense that something will go wrong if you let your guard down. Often it has been there a long time, and was manageable enough to work around until it wasn’t. Rather than only working to suppress it, we look at what the anxiety is responding to, in order to understand it and begin to reduce it.
Depression and Low Mood
Feelings of numbness, flatness, and hopelessness. Things stop having much meaning, it becomes hard to do the things that used to make you happy, and it can be difficult to feel present in your own life. Sometimes this follows a loss. Sometimes it arrives after a long stretch of doing what was expected without much room to live on your own terms. We look at what the numbness is protecting you from, and what it is keeping at a distance.
Perfectionism and Achievement
The goalpost keeps moving, achieving it never quite produces the feeling it was supposed to, and the self-criticism is relentless. Often this made sense once, in a family or an environment where doing well was how you stayed safe or got noticed. We look at where the pressure came from, what it has cost you, and what your sense of yourself might rest on besides what you accomplish.
Identity and Family of Origin
The caretaker, the achiever, the one who does not need much. The roles you took on early tend to persist even after you have left home. Underneath them is often a harder question: you were raised with obligation to family as the highest value and are living somewhere that treats independence that way, and it is not obvious which of those is actually yours. We look at how those roles formed, how they show up now, and at the guilt that comes with wanting something for yourself.
Sexuality, Family, and Coming Out
You may still be working out what you feel, or whether it is allowed to feel it. You may know already and be deciding what to tell your family, and what it would cost. Or you may have told them, and are still living with how they took it. Growing up somewhere that treated it as not an option makes all of this harder, and it often means there is a version of yourself you built in order to be accepted. We look at that version, at the grief of having had to build it, and at what you actually feel underneath it. I work with queer and questioning adults at every stage of that, at whatever pace it takes.
Work, Career, and Transition
The disorientation after a layoff, a career change, or a role that stopped fitting. When a lot of who you are was based on what you do, losing the work takes more with it than a title. Often it was giving you purpose and a sense of being useful. You have lived for your achievements and given years to building a career, and now the question is who you are without it. We look at what the job was carrying, and at what is left once it is not the thing organizing your days.
Ready to get started?
The first step is a 45-minute initial consultation in person at my Union Square office.
Schedule a consultation