I practice an advanced modality for transforming the attachment patterns, personality structures, and psycho-biological survival strategies originating in the childhood environment. The approach is profoundly humanizing, gentle, precise, and respectful of the uniqueness of individual experience, and is meant to establish a safe, intersubjective container for deep exploration and healing. I draw on depth-psychology, mindfulness, interpersonal neurobiology, and body-oriented approaches for inner change, as well as practically incorporating spiritual insight.

Sessions with me could be deeply supportive for you around the following issues, for example:

• trouble coming to rest or finding balance
• struggle saying no, expressing what you need/want
• difficulties with boundaries
• recurring anxieties about life or relationships
• low self-esteem, social difficulties
• caught in self-doubt, shame or blaming
• issues with trusting
• give too much; giving too little
• too rigid or too flexible in situations
• getting overwhelmed by emotions
• feeling numb, detached or empty
• getting too close, or feeling isolated
• emotional intimacy and sexuality in relationship
• overthinking
• putting pressure on yourself, performance anxiety 
• feeling disorganized inside

Sessions could also be supportive if: 

• you would like to experience more of the following qualities or capacities: relaxation, aliveness, intimacy, inner clarity, fullness, connection, authenticity, peace, balance. 
  
  
• you want to change a behavior or tendency, and you are open to exploring your inner world, possibly connecting with lost or previously inaccessible emotions or aspects of your experience, and shifting toward a new relationship with yourself
  
  
• you want to compassionately explore the role you're playing in your own difficulties and recover a sense of freedom and openness
  
  
• want to spend more time with the healthy, vital parts of yourself to anchor positive changes that are already underway
  
  
• have experience with traditional forms of talk therapy and are curious what a deeply relational, intentional, somatically-aware, here-and-now approach can bring you
  
  
• would like to be in touch with yourself at a deeper level, beyond habitual thoughts, beliefs, feelings, perceptions and behaviors
  
  
• want to increase your capacity to hold with curiosity and compassion your full range of experience, which usually leads to feeling more grounded and oriented
  
  
• want to be more available for the present moment
  
  
• want to increase your possibility for deep, fulfilling and vital relationships by becoming more aware of yourself
  
  
• would like to move towards relaxed confidence in being who you are
  
  

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My practice is informed by the Neuro-Affective Relational Model, an advanced clinical approach for transforming attachment, relational and developmental trauma. In sessions, we may track the personality patterns that cause life-long psychobiological symptoms and interpersonal difficulties, inviting openness and curiosity. Elegantly combining practical spirituality, neuroscience, and psychodynamic wisdom, NARM also draws on body-oriented approaches for inner change. 

The work I offer does not explicitly aim at behavioral change, but focuses on the deeper dynamics of the self: inner work for outer change. What I facilitate is deep inner exploration and mindful awareness of self in the present moment. As we access the most authentic parts of ourselves, our behaviors change naturally. 

We are formed in relationship. As children, we are naturally dependent. The survival imperative to maintain relationships with our caregivers, and thus adapt to our environment, always trumps our natural authentic needs and expressions. Later in life, we may now be independent and relatively free, yet we carry our childhoods into the future. Originally, our adaptations were healthy and creative. Now they are contractions of the life force, occluding the present. In the past, we may have had to give up our lives in order to save our lives. This is the bind, or the core dilemma, in its starkest expression. In adult life, we are no longer dependent, yet continue to filter reality through a restrictive lens. 

Previously successful adaptations or survival strategies now get in the way of being ourselves. Exploring the “unconscious” is not so much an excavation, analysis, or explanation of the past, as it is an ongoing process of becoming aware of what we really want, how we’re really feeling, and what we’re really doing, now.

Exploration sheds light on the nature of personality structures and adaptations as a substitute for authentic Being. We recover ourselves gradually in the openness of inquiry. Growing compassion for, and awareness of, our unique humanity sheds light on the Self and dissolves our identifications. As we uncover our true intentions, they serve as our guides in exploration and reconnection to Self. In this process, our inner difficulties become the ground and material for creative vitality and openness, now.  

As we remain curious about and experience what emerges in the co-created therapy field, I may sometimes take a directive role, based on an agreement with you to move through sessions in a way that is faithful to your wishes and intentions for seeking this work. 

Like many therapists, my way of working has had many influences, including attachment theory, contemporary relational psychoanalysis, object relations theory, mindfulness-based modalities, trauma-informed therapies, body-oriented practices and somatic psychologies, Eastern and Western spirituality, ‘Jungian’ work, and interpersonal neurobiology, among other things. 

I believe that relationship is the primary vehicle for inner change, and that one essential factor in therapeutic processes is a therapist's own capacities, experience, and self-awareness, which I take seriously. 

The ‘container’ for this work is more flexible and spontaneous than therapeutic counseling. Adventurousness, vulnerability, a sense of humor, some bravery, non-effortful focus, willingness to be uncertain, as well as curiosity before judgment, are all aids for this kind of self-exploration.

I primarily focus on holding an open space for exploring your personal experience, without taking sides or making judgments about what is arising, and invite inquiry towards awareness and deeper understanding. This process is meant to support you in becoming more grounded in your truth, whatever it is. 

Creative and constructive pathways open when we are both grounded in our truth and have contact with the reality of situations. When we integrate body and mind, we become more fully here. When we become aware of and integrate more parts of ourselves, we move into Presence and increase our capacity for living. 

In this work, there is a willingness to experiment while caring for our own boundaries and not pressuring ourselves. In order to grow, we need to find a balance between safety and challenge.

In the best case, our professional relationship may plant seeds for, or stimulate, a natural process of growth, transformation, and self-awareness, and facilitate health, vitality, and your full expression as a human being. 

With regard to your intentions, if a particular issue indicates something that could be better worked on in a more clearly structured therapeutic relationship – with me or with someone else – I will do my best to track this and make appropriate suggestions. I can recommend various therapies and types of personal work, within the scope of my knowledge and experience. 

Here are some possibilities for this work:

• A conscious relationship that you call into being to support yourself, founded on an agreement that we will use what arises for your benefit and growth, as defined by you, to the best of my and your abilities, as your intentions become clearer through good-faith exploration.
• Counseling for issues around your relationships (with emphasis on self-exploration and facilitating the emergence of your truth and clarifying what may be getting in the way of living in accordance with this).
• Consultation about psychotherapies, personal growth work, philosophy, spirituality, yoga, and so on. Books, recommendations, and practices. Accessible explanations that speak to what you’re looking for. (I bring together academic-quality research standards, an intellectual conscience, open-heartedness, and the personal experience of someone who has lived “off the beaten path.”)
• A witness to help you articulate, and allow yourself to celebrate, how far you have come. The integrating effect of being seen in your aliveness and creativity.
• Gentle encouragement to experience more deeply and clearly. An open space for the emergence of what is essential to you, now.
• A resource for inner exploration that you can use to support your everyday life in various ways.
• A place to check-in. Connecting the dots that have emerged as you are becoming more aware of yourself in certain areas of life and where you’d like to go.
• Ordinary situations as the true field of practice toward living in accordance with your heart’s desire. Inquiring into the significance of the small things, illuminating the roots of subtle distress.
• A mirror you can use in the process of withdrawing your projections and reclaiming your psychic wholeness.
• Accompaniment and presence through inner and outer changes.
• A relational container to reinforce, become aware of, and anchor positive shifts that are already happening and/or to research in real-time what’s in the way.
• Illuminating the significance of salient relational issues or events in your life by supporting you with my presence and knowledge to relate these issues experientially and cognitively to your Self and psychological growth process since childhood.
• A space to explore what’s true and what’s not. Presence and contact in order to feel. 

The primary sources are intended to support and inspire people engaged in creative lives of self-inquiry. Excerpts will usually be short, and I may include reading recommendations and other miscellany. 

Currently the newsletter is infrequent and irregular. 

This is the rationale: So many brilliant people before us have expressed essential insights in ways that we can hardly improve upon. Rather than reinvent the wheel or contribute more clutter, a curatorial exposition honors and makes available these riches at an historical moment of unprecedented change.

Future possibility of minimal information about offerings and developments related to my practice.

NOT SUITABLE FOR
I work with people to support the natural movement towards psychological health, vitality, and individuation. I am not a doctor, nor a licensed psychotherapist, and I don't offer medical advice or treatments. If you're wondering what we can work on together, we can talk about it.

LOCATION
Limited availability for in-person sessions, in the Kreuzberg/Neukölln areas. Online video sessions available through whatever channel is appropriate and convenient. Transcontinental rhythms across various time zones are possible. 

PAYMENT
My fees and policies are similar to those of many practitioners offering similar services, and are determined on an individual basis. I believe that any relational work leading to the expression and unfolding of the self is priceless. Billing depends on the service provided.  

INSURANCE
I am unfortunately only able to work with privately paying clients. Paying for your own personal work can be beneficial, for various reasons. We can discuss this and explore your situation, possibly finding a supportive solution within your worldly means.

WHAT DOES "PSYCHO-SPIRITUAL" MEAN?
Today the term is used in various ways. Here it is used intentionally vaguely with the awareness that relationships and practices for fostering psychological growth, insight, healing, wisdom, human development, integration, individuation, waking up, etc., have existed in many times, places, and contexts, beyond the Western medical model and its gift of psychotherapy, which has existed only for about 100 years. There is always an inexplicable element in these practices, as there is in relationships. “Psycho-spiritual" includes everything in human life that is not visible to the naked eye, encompassing both what is personal and what goes beyond that, without coming to any philosophical, scientific, religious, ethical or other conclusions about it. Here the term expresses the belief that we may live ever more deeply, truly, and wholly from ourselves, in connection with others, and that there are means available to support us. In other words, we may return to Being and its presencing as our individuality, which is fundamentally creative. Such a general, yet specific term is appropriate for a pluralistic, globalized era, where inner growth and self-awareness are playing an ever more important role both personally and collectively.