A space for those who experience the world through image, symbol, and story
to navigate emotional intensity, identity conflict, relational instability, and addictive tendencies.
Sounding the depths of the unconscious to reveal the source of creativity.
Therapy for artists integrates personal exploration with the creative process by reflecting on who you are, how you see yourself, the conditions that give rise to your work, and what your work means to you.
Many artists seek therapy when creative blocks, burnout, addiction, or identity crises begin to interfere with their ability to create.
Psychotherapy that approaches creativity as an expression of unconscious process invites shifts in perspective that clarify your vision, create opportunities for authentic self-realization, deepen symbolic association, and open new dimensions of resonance in your work.
Rather than using art as a therapeutic technique in session, I offer therapy for creatives in San Francisco and Los Angeles — contemporary artists, writers, musicians, founders, tech innovators and visionaries — designed to deepen your practice and enrich your life.
I use the word artist broadly to describe imaginative people whose experience of being alive is intense and vivid, and who may not feel they fit inside conventional social structures.
Whether you’re a poet or an entrepreneur, this work is for those who want to explore their inner world and the meaning that arises from their creative work.
If you’re looking for a therapist for artists who understands that the way you perceive the world is central to both your creativity and your suffering, you’re in the right place. Move beyond problem-solving into deeper layers of meaning, integration, and creative awakening.
Therapy for artists in San Francisco and Los Angeles — or creative nomads and remote tech founders with geographic independence — is offered in person and online. If you’re ready to get to work, book a session.
Many artists and creatives wrestle with questions of identity, belonging, and purpose.
Depression and low self-esteem can make accessing and expressing your innate gifts feel out of reach.
Because the creative process is so deeply personal, and often intimately linked to self-worth, periods of struggle or perceived failure can feel devastating.
Energized by possibility and still discouraged by self-doubt, periods of authentic inspiration may alternate with uncertainty, burnout or imposter syndrome.
The essential work of self-examination addresses the insistent presence of what feels too difficult or painful to confront alone.
Often, creative blocks arise when inner work goes unattended. Therapy for artists offers an exploratory space to move through obstacles that stand in the way of the flow of ideas, allowing your authentic creative spirit to emerge in all its multiplicity, so you can manifest work that is uniquely yours, however it takes shape.
For many artists, moments of heightened emotional sensitivity offer openings to make meaning from chaos and translate your unique perspective of the world.
To descend the psychic staircase and confront your shadow is to approach a certain threshold of meaning encountered by a long lineage of artists, poets, and musicians.
For those who frequently dance at the edge of intensity, beauty, and collapse in the pursuit of inspiration or relief, I offer a discreet, trauma-informed space for recovery that doesn’t ask you to abandon your creative self or your work.
Addiction treatment for artists understands that the same sensitivity and porousness that makes your work a poignant translation of the world makes you more susceptible to addiction.
Therapy for artists facing addiction explores the underworld of the self, prepares the ground for an old identity to be surrendered, and plants a seed in that fertile dark — nurturing the conditions for renewal all along the way.
From this slow and intentional transformation, inspiration begins to stir. Rising gently through the gate, awakened from the shadowy depths with new awareness and intention, you may find that your work looks different now.
What you may notice as you re-emerge into the sunlight is that your senses are even more acute than they were before — and that your addiction was a source of confusion rather than inspiration.
For more focused information about substance abuse treatment for artists, see the addiction therapy page.
You make art because something inside needs expression.
The work is not separate from you.
It’s how you make sense of yourself.
Rediscover your flow.
Let meaning emerge.
Know yourself through your work.
Therapy for artists is for people who organize experience through perception, making, interpretation, association, and discovery.
Rather than organized by profession, therapy for artists is psychotherapy organized around perception.
What we notice, what draws our attention, and how we interpret what we see are shaped by memory, emotion, identity, culture, imagination, and where we stand.
Phenomenology is shining a light and watching what transpires in the encounter between the light, the thing illuminated, and the person looking.
For creative people who approach life itself as an unfolding work of art, psychotherapy can become a conceptual element of your broader practice — a space to examine perception, question assumptions, and explore the symbolic language that shapes your inner world.
A phenomenological approach to psychotherapy stays curious about your experience of being in the world and how you move through it. From where you stand, what comes into focus? What remains at the edges? What changes when we shift the frame? What becomes visible when we look again?
Rather than imposing meaning from the outside, we stay close to what is emerging. We attend to image, symbol, metaphor, pattern, contradiction, and relationships as they arise spontaneously.
Artists understand intuitively that perception is a creative act. In some cases, looking closely changes both the object and the subject.
Therapy for artists integrates psychotherapy with the creative process through reflection, curiosity, and imagination.
For artists and other imaginative thinkers, this way of working may feel familiar. Creative practice and psychotherapy both ask us to tolerate uncertainty, sustain attention, discover relationships between things that initially appear unrelated, and allow new forms to emerge.
The journey of self-discovery in psychotherapy nurtures the foundation for deeply meaningful work, whether you’re an architect, filmmaker, actor, director, or designer.
Therapy for artists is an invitation to listen closely to your own subtle undercurrents and the throughline to your own personal narrative.
Depth psychotherapy invites an exploration of the images, thoughts, memories or dreams that surface when experience is slowed down and real listening begins.
Discovering the meaning of this new material can be an expansive process for the spirit and intellect, making the work of art an endeavor of enlightenment.
Creative therapy helps you explore your inner landscape — the symbolic, emotional, and ancestral layers — to create a life and body of work that feels resonant and meaningful. In this process, healing and creative realization are deeply intertwined, each informing and expanding the other.
To know yourself — both your history and your potential — is to know the future direction of your work as a thinker, maker or writer.
The more personal the descent, the more universal the work becomes. And as self understanding deepens, the tapestry of your creative vision becomes richer, more nuanced, and more alive.
Therapy for artists is a path not just of healing, but of creative awakening. In the process of coming to know yourself more fully, psychotherapy can help you access the source of your creative potential and expand your capacity to produce work that is authentic, resonant, and impactful.
Exploring narrative coherence through symbolic language.
As a therapist with a past life as an artist, my work is deeply informed by my background in conceptual photography and a lifelong commitment to looking closely.
In art school, I began to think in images. Visual art became a medium of inquiry into perception, identity, and meaning.
When I arrived in San Francisco to begin my training as a psychotherapist, I realized that my ability to see in pictures helped to illuminate the inner lives of others in therapy.
Since then, I have had the privilege of working with painters, photographers, designers, poets, filmmakers, conceptual artists and advertising creatives — supporting personal exploration, insight, and healing in service of a creative life that is vital and deeply meaningful.
Photography taught me that the image contains more than what is visible at first glance. Psychotherapy has taught me that everything is continually emerging.
In therapy, sometimes changing the lens changes what becomes possible.
I help artists, writers, makers, and seekers explore the constellation of words, images, memories, and sensations that form their inner landscape — and the symbolic language through which it speaks.
I offer therapy for artists, writers, and founders in San Francisco, Los Angeles and throughout California.
My office is located in San Francisco on the border of the Mission District and Potrero Hill, situated between the California College of the Arts (CCA) and the The C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco.
“Art does not reproduce the visible; it makes visible.” — Paul Klee
Expand perception.
Invite transformation.Clarify your vision.
