Mood and anxiety
therapy for mood and anxiety
There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes with mood disorders that is hard to describe to someone who hasn't felt it. It isn't always dramatic. Sometimes it's just a persistent flatness, a sense that colour has drained out of things you used to enjoy. Sometimes it's waking up and having to give yourself a pep talk just to get through the next two hours. And sometimes it's more confusing than that, periods of feeling wired or expansive or unlike yourself, followed by a crash that leaves you piecing yourself back together and wondering what just happened.
Depression and bipolar disorder are not character flaws. They are not proof that you aren't trying hard enough or that you don't have enough to be grateful for. They also aren't simple, and they don't respond well to simple advice. If you have been living with either for a while, you probably already know that rest and exercise and journaling only go so far. What you might actually need is a space to understand your own patterns more deeply, to make sense of your history, and to figure out what getting better actually looks like for you specifically, not for some version of you that fits neatly into a brochure.
Anxiety is your nervous system trying to keep you safe. The problem is that it doesn't always know how to stop. If you live with anxiety, you might know this well. The thoughts that spiral before bed, the dread that shows up before something that logically shouldn't feel so scary, the constant scanning for what might go wrong. Your body is often braced, even when nothing is happening. Rest doesn't feel restful. You're tired, but you can't switch off.
Anxiety shows up in many different ways. It might look like social anxiety that makes certain situations feel genuinely painful. Generalised anxiety that follows you into every corner of your life. Panic that arrives without warning and leaves you shaken. Health anxiety that turns every symptom into a catastrophe. And OCD, which is so much more than the stereotypes around it. OCD is intrusive thoughts you don't want, paired with an urgent and exhausting need to do something about them. It can be deeply distressing, and it can also be something that quietly runs in the background for years before anyone names it properly.
Whatever your experience of anxiety looks like, the work we do together is about more than just managing symptoms. We look at what your anxiety is trying to protect you from, where it learned to be so loud, and how to build a different relationship with it over time. Not one where anxiety never shows up, but one where it no longer runs the show.
my approach
A lot of therapy for mood disorders and anxiety focuses on managing symptoms, and while that matters, it has never felt like the whole picture to me. If we only work on what's happening on the surface, we often miss what's driving it underneath. My approach is psychodynamic at its core, which means we pay attention to patterns. The ones that show up in your relationships, in the way you treat yourself, in the stories you've been telling about who you are and what you deserve. A lot of what we experience as depression, anxiety or OCD has roots that go deeper than the present moment, and understanding those roots tends to change things in a way that coping strategies alone don't.
That said, I also believe in giving you something to work with in the day to day. I draw on DBT skills, not as a checklist, but as practical tools that help you navigate the moments when everything feels too big or too fast or too much. Learning to regulate your nervous system, tolerate distress without it swallowing you whole, and communicate your needs clearly, these are things that make an immediate difference to how you move through your life.
And then there is parts work. I find this especially useful for people who feel conflicted inside, who notice one part of them wants to heal while another part holds back, or who carry a lot of self-criticism that no amount of positive thinking seems to touch. Parts work helps us get curious about those different voices rather than fighting them. Usually, even the parts that seem destructive are trying to protect you from something. Understanding that tends to shift things quite quickly.
These approaches work well together because they operate at different levels. Psychodynamic work helps us understand where things come from. DBT gives you tools for the present. Parts work helps you develop a different relationship with yourself. Together, they make space for insight and for change, not just one or the other.
Let’s Work Together
