Relationships & Belonging

This page explores our connection to others—how our relationships shape who we are and how therapy can help us rediscover belonging and authentic connection.

The Space Between Self and Other

We can’t buy groceries, ride a bicycle, or survive infancy without the countless lives of others. Yet for many of us, there remains a sense that even though we are in connection, we are not being known in the way we need. 

Relationships can bring about the greatest joy we may ever experience. At the same time, they can be the source of our deepest pain. Whether it’s the end of a marriage, ongoing conflict with a partner or coworker, or the loneliness of having few meaningful friendships, these points of connection and disconnection reveal something essential about how we experience ourselves in the world. 

From an existential perspective, our felt sense of isolation and connection are related. To exist with an individual body, mind, and consciousness is to be set apart from the world. And yet, we cannot exist without others. From birth to death, we remain dependent, directly or indirectly, on the lives that sustain and shape us. 

My work as a therapist explores this paradoxical space between self and other. In therapy, we examine how your patterns of relating have formed, how they serve or limit you, and how you might open to new ways of being. 

The Many Forms of Disconnection

Disconnection can emerge in friendships, family relationships, or work settings, leaving you uncertain how to trust or be in the presence of another. You might even feel disconnected in a more fundamental, existential sense—a feeling that even in a crowded room, no one truly knows or cares about you. 

Each of these experiences invites us to explore how we push and pull on ourselves and others, and how we might begin to understand and work with our sense of disconnection. 

In therapy, we explore how the patterns that once protected you may now limit your ability to connect, and how genuine relationship—within the therapy itself—can become a space for healing and rediscovery. 

The Courage to Be

When we cultivate a deeper relationship with our own thoughts, feelings, and desires, we create the foundation for genuine connection to appear. From this place, we can learn to remain grounded in ourselves while opening to the possibility of authentic relationships. 

As we work together, you may come to see that belonging is less about fitting in and more about standing firmly in who you are, while at the same time remaining open to the vulnerability that makes connection possible.