Intensive Short Term Dynamic Psychotherapy
Palo Alto & Del Mar, CA
What Is Intensive Short Term Dynamic Psychotherapy?
Do you struggle to connect with deeper positive emotions like joy, love, or lust because you find yourself overwhelmed by sadness, anger, or guilt? Or have you suppressed all emotions, rendering yourself depressed or empty?
Have you noticed unhealthy habits or relationship patterns that keep repeating in your life, but feel unsure of how to stop them?
Would you like to learn more about your unconscious defenses and reactions that are keeping you from fully experiencing your life in the present moment?
Intensive Short Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP) is an emotion-focused form of therapy designed to help you overcome self-sabotaging behaviors that are keeping you from progressing in life and reaching your fullest potential. It encourages healing and balance by strengthening self-awareness, insight, and emotional processing and change. When you can have access to grief over self-sabotage, deeper change can occur.
This therapeutic approach is especially effective because it works directly with your emotional experience in the present moment. Each ISTDP session will give you the opportunity to identify your unconscious defenses and reactions that are keeping you from fully experiencing your emotions.
Who Can Intensive Short Term Dynamic Psychotherapy Help?
You may notice yourself caught in self-sabotaging behaviors or developing unhealthy habits and relationships. Being stuck in these unwanted cycles can get frustrating, especially if you feel like you’ve tried everything you can to overcome them. You’re probably searching for a breakthrough, but aren’t sure where to turn.
If you have a hard time accessing deeper emotions due to ongoing symptoms of anxiety, depression, or trauma, ISTDP can offer a gateway to true, everlasting change. When you can learn new ways to access, regulate and find emotional balance, you’ll also be able to feel more of the positive feelings, and have the ability to access the lighter feelings—like joy, happiness, and peace of mind—while working through the more challenging ones—like sadness, anger, grief, and guilt.
ISTDP differs from other methods of healing you may have tried because it offers a true understanding of who you are. By learning how your thoughts, reactions, and self-sabotaging behaviors hold you back, you can develop a realistic path to healing and become less likely to repeat them moving forward.
Have any questions? Send me a message!
How Does Intensive Short Term Psychotherapy Work?
ISTDP is a collaborative, moment-to-moment process where you will be given a safe place to explore the inner workings of who you are. ISTDP is especially beneficial if you’re trying to:
Overcome patterns of self-sabotage
Resolve emotional wounds and unaddressed trauma
Address chronic anxiety
Strengthen Emotional Awareness
Improve Relationships
I will get to know you by inquiring deeply into your emotional wellbeing by discussing specific situations, so that you can learn what happens at a deeper, emotional level when these unwanted patterns of behavior show up. We will work together to help you find acceptance of your lived experience so that you can feel emotional balance and confidence moving forward.
What Are ISTDP Sessions Like?
ISTDP was developed as a focused model of therapy. Of course, everyone brings their own unique set of circumstances and situations to the table, so my approach to therapy always respects that. I address the individual needs of each client, but our ultimate goal is to help you experience meaningful shifts within the first few sessions.
The therapy process is emotionally active and collaborative in that each session will start by exploring specific examples of situations in your life in which your reaction to something felt problematic, overblown or unwarranted. It could also be an example of a situation where you or others thought you should have felt something, but instead, you were numb or empty. This could be a recent conflict, emotional reaction, or situation that just feels difficult to navigate. I try to ask questions that will help us dig deeper into the details of the situation, how it made you feel, and what you experienced in the very moment that it happened.
Throughout the entire process, I will listen with my eyes as much as my ears as you open up about your experiences by paying attention to your body language, the tone and cadence of your voice, your eye contact, as well as any tension you may feel. A key aspect to ISTDP is accountability, so when you react in a way that doesn’t quite align with your story—like laughing when discussing something painful—I may comment on this so we can together identify all the defenses that are keeping you from being your true self. I’ll gently chime in to gather more information and better understand where your reaction is coming from.
From there, we will identify the purpose of these defenses or reactions, which are masking deeper emotions that you’re not allowing yourself to experience. As you find balance between how you truly feel and how those feelings are externally manifested, we will begin to access the underlying feelings connected to the situation by using experiential techniques, such as visualization or emotional dialogue exercises, like speaking in first-person directly to ourselves or figures from the past—also known as Gestalt or empty chair techniques.
Over time, this process helps you move beyond mere understanding toward fully experiencing your emotions. When your self-awareness is combined with emotional processing, a powerful breakthrough can happen—one where you can live life with greater clarity, confidence, and authenticity.
My Background With Intensive Short Term Dynamic Psychotherapy
My work with this attachment and emotion-focused therapeutic approach began in 2004 after being inspired by a powerful presentation on ISTDP. These experiences have taught me how to examine and work through my own defenses. Working with ISTDP has improved my personal relationships, helped me learn to better manage and navigate my own emotions, and given me the means to effectively help my clients find true emotional balance in their lives.
My training included six years of intensive study, supervision, and consultation with leading figures within the field of this specialty, including Dr. Robert Neborsky, Dr. Jon Frederickson, Dr. Patricia Coughlin, Dr. Mary Main, and Dr. Josette ten Have de Labije. I have also attended seminars with Allan Abbass, a prominent researcher in ISTDP.
Let Intensive Short Term Dynamic Psychotherapy Guide You Toward Fulfillment And Self-Compassion
ISTDP lets you work through your challenges naturally and organically by giving you the knowledge on long-standing emotional difficulties so that you can develop a transformative path forward. If you’re ready to experience profound healing from all that holds you back, please reach out via our contact page for a free, fifteen-minute consultation. I look forward to working with you!
