Frequently Asked Questions

No. My practice is private pay only. Most clients find that this actually works in their favor — insurance-based therapy requires a diagnosis, limits the number of sessions, and dictates the treatment approach. Working outside that system means we can do what your specific pattern actually needs, for as long or as short as that takes, without a third party deciding what’s appropriate for your mental health.  However, I am able to provide a diagnosis and superbill upon request if you’d like to seek out-of-network reimbursement from your insurance provider.

If you’ve already spent time in therapy, read the books, done the self-help techniques — and you still find yourself reacting the same way, triggered by the same things, stuck in the same patterns — this work was designed for exactly that experience. Talk therapy works at the level of conscious thought. But most recurring patterns don’t live there. They live in the subconscious, in the nervous system, in automatic responses that happen before thinking even begins. If insight alone hasn’t changed things, working at the subconscious level is the logical next step. The best way to find out if this is a fit is a free 20-minute consultation.

Most therapists specialize in one modality — CBT, DBT, psychodynamic, EMDR — and apply it to most clients. My approach starts with identifying the pattern first, then selecting the tool that fits it. I’m a licensed therapist (LMFT) with 18 years of clinical experience, which means I bring the full clinical foundation of traditional therapy — plus hypnotherapy, NLP, RTT, and Integral Eye Movement Therapy for working at the subconscious level. The goal is not to keep you in therapy indefinitely. It’s to change what needs to change and get you out.

It depends entirely on what you’re working on and which format you choose. Some clients do a focused 21-day hypnotherapy intensive for one specific issue and see significant shift within that window. Others work with me in ongoing individual therapy over several months. During your free consultation, I’ll give you an honest sense of what I think is realistic for your situation — not a vague “it depends” answer designed to keep you coming back.

Yes. I see clients in person in Napa, California, and via telehealth throughout California. Hypnotherapy, NLP, and therapy sessions all work effectively online.  Some clients find that their online experience is equally effective and more convenient.

Overthinking that won’t respond to logic, breathing exercises, or “just relax” is almost never a thinking problem. It’s a nervous system problem. The brain is running a threat-detection pattern — scanning, replaying, anticipating — because at some point, vigilance felt necessary for safety. That pattern became automatic. It now runs regardless of whether the situation actually warrants it. Talking about it helps you understand it. Changing it requires working at the level where the pattern is stored — the subconscious and nervous system. Hypnotherapy and NLP are specifically designed to access and rewire those automatic loops in a way that insight-based approaches can’t reach.

Replaying conversations is a form of anxiety that lives in the body, not just the mind. It’s connected to a deep fear of having done something wrong, said the wrong thing, or caused someone to think less of you. Most people who experience this already know, logically, that they’re fine — the replay happens anyway. That’s because the pattern isn’t being driven by logic. It’s being driven by a subconscious program that learned to monitor for social threat. Therapy that addresses only the conscious level — reframing, challenging the thought — often gives temporary relief. The work that changes it goes to where the monitoring pattern was formed.

Nothing is wrong with you. Reassurance-seeking in relationships is almost always rooted in an anxious attachment pattern — a learned response to early experiences where love, approval, or safety felt unpredictable or conditional. Your nervous system learned to check. To scan for signs that you’re okay, that you’re loved, that you haven’t done something wrong. The checking becomes exhausting for you and straining for the relationship. The pattern can change. Not by deciding to need less reassurance, but by working at the level where the original insecurity was formed and updating what the nervous system believes is true about your safety in connection.

Feeling not good enough despite real achievement is one of the most common patterns I work with — and one of the most misunderstood. It’s not low self-esteem in the conventional sense. It’s a subconscious core belief, usually formed early, that runs beneath everything you do. External achievements can’t touch it because it isn’t stored at the conscious level where achievements register. This is exactly where hypnotherapy and RTT are most effective — accessing the specific origin point of that belief, understanding what the mind concluded at that moment, and updating that conclusion at the root. Not just replacing a negative thought with a positive one. Actually changing what the subconscious believes is true.

The inner critic isn’t a character flaw. It’s a learned protective mechanism. At some point, being hard on yourself first felt safer than being criticized by someone else — or it was the only way to feel in control of an unpredictable environment. The critic became automatic. It now runs independently of whether the original threat exists. Understanding this intellectually is useful. It rarely quiets the critic. What changes it is going to where the self-critical pattern was installed — the subconscious — and replacing the function it was serving with something that doesn’t require you to attack yourself to feel safe.

People-pleasing is not a personality type. It’s a survival strategy that worked at some point — keeping the peace, avoiding conflict, maintaining connection when connection felt conditional. The problem is that the strategy becomes automatic and runs even when you no longer need it, even when it costs you. You can’t think your way out of people-pleasing because it doesn’t live in the thinking mind. It lives in the part of you that learned what happens when you disappoint people. The work is changing what that part of you believes about the consequences of having needs, saying no, and taking up space.

Using alcohol to unwind, decompress, or quiet an overactive mind is extremely common — and it’s almost never actually about the alcohol. It’s about what the alcohol is doing: turning down anxiety, softening emotional pain, creating a boundary between the workday and the rest of life, making social situations feel manageable. When drinking is doing a job that nothing else is doing, taking it away without addressing what it’s managing rarely works. The more useful question is: what is the drinking solving? That’s where the work begins — understanding the underlying pattern the drinking is serving, and building a different way to address it.

High-functioning anxiety is particularly invisible because the anxiety is driving the functioning. The productivity, the preparation, the over-delivering — these often aren’t signs of ambition. They’re anxiety management strategies that happen to produce results. The problem is they’re exhausting, they never feel like enough, and they don’t actually resolve the anxiety underneath. Many high-achieving people have spent years in therapy without the anxiety shifting because the strategies that drive their success are the same strategies keeping the anxiety in place. Working at the subconscious level — where the original threat that the achievement is trying to manage lives — is often what finally moves it.

Attachment theory is one of the most useful frameworks for understanding relationship patterns. It’s also frequently misapplied — people learn their attachment style and expect the knowledge to change the behavior. It rarely does, because attachment patterns are not stored as knowledge. They’re stored as nervous system responses that fire before thinking begins. Understanding why you anxiously attach doesn’t stop you from anxiously attaching in the moment. What changes attachment patterns is working at the level where they live — in the subconscious, in the body’s automatic responses — and updating the original conclusions the nervous system formed about safety, love, and connection.

Yes. Fear of rejection that shows up disproportionately — avoiding saying what you think, not sending the email, over-preparing for conversations, shrinking — is almost always connected to a specific early experience where rejection had real consequences. The nervous system generalized from that experience and now treats potential rejection as a threat equivalent to the original one. The rational mind knows the stakes are lower. The body doesn’t. Hypnotherapy is particularly effective here because it can access the original experience where the fear was formed, process what the mind concluded at that moment, and update the threat response — so the body stops treating ordinary situations as dangerous.

It almost always means the work just hasn’t yet reached where the pattern lives. Most therapy modalities work at the conscious level — the level of thought, insight, narrative, and understanding. That level is genuinely useful. But many recurring patterns — anxiety, emotional reactivity, self-worth issues, relationship patterns — are stored subconsciously, in the nervous system, in automatic responses that and predate language and logic. You can spend years understanding a pattern without accessing the level where it’s held. It can feel  inherently impossible. But often it’s a mismatch between the tool and the location of the problem. That’s the gap this work is designed to close.

Hypnotherapy works by guiding you into a deeply relaxed, focused state in which the conscious, analytical mind steps back and the subconscious becomes more accessible. In that state, it’s possible to identify the original experiences and conclusions that are driving the anxiety response — and to update those conclusions directly, at the level where they’re stored. Unlike talk therapy, which works through conscious understanding, hypnotherapy works through the mechanism the anxiety is actually running on. Most clients report a noticeable shift after one to three sessions — not because the anxiety has been suppressed, but because the subconscious program running it has changed.

Clinical hypnotherapy has nothing in common with stage hypnosis. You are not unconscious, not under anyone’s control, and not made to do anything. You remain fully aware throughout the session. Hypnosis is simply a focused state of relaxed concentration — similar to the state you’re in just before falling asleep, or when you’re so absorbed in something that time disappears. In that state, the analytical mind quiets and the subconscious becomes more receptive to change. It is used clinically for anxiety, phobias, trauma, behavioral patterns, and more. The research base is substantial and growing.