The Deep End of Ordinary Life
Existential, depth-oriented psychotherapy for thoughtful, high-achieving adults. Anxiety, life transitions, inherited patterns, and the questions of meaning that live beneath them. Telehealth across Washington.
For the ones who hold it all together
The people I work with are usually the capable ones: thoughtful, accomplished adults whose lives are working, mostly, and who carry more than they let on. Some arrive with an anxiety that has outlasted every strategy. Some are in the middle of a transition—a career, a relationship, a version of themselves—that's asking to be examined rather than managed. Some grew up holding things together for everyone else and are beginning to feel the weight of a role they never chose. And some simply sense there's more underneath: more meaning, more honesty, more of themselves.
You don't need a crisis to begin. Depth work starts wherever you are, with whatever feels ordinary, unfinished, or unnamed, and goes as deep as you want to take it.
How the work happens
Therapy with me is collaborative and unhurried. From the foundation of a trusting relationship, we look together at your values, assumptions, and ways of being in the world: the patterns you've inherited, the coping that once made sense, the questions that haven't had anywhere to go. My approach is depth-oriented and person-centered, integrating relational and psychodynamic perspectives within an existential-humanistic framework—tailored, always, to you.
"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves…Live the questions now." —Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Meet Michelle
I’ve spent twenty years studying the big questions. I started with a philosophy degree, then a master's in psychology with clinical training, then a doctorate (the scholarly kind). That long apprenticeship taught me the habit of holding complexity, of honoring the messy, contradictory truths that exist within all of us. And I’ve learned to sit with the liminal: that unsettling space between what once was and what is yet to be, where life’s deepest transitions happen. That’s the work now: sitting with one person at a time, in a relationship built to hold what the rest of life can't.
Finding the right therapist matters more than finding one quickly
Research is consistent on this: The strongest predictor of therapy's success is the quality of the relationship between client and therapist. So I encourage you to talk with as many therapists as it takes to find someone you connect with, whether or not that's me. If what you've read here resonates, a free 15-minute consultation is a low-stakes way to find out.
Explore working together
I’m currently scheduling free 15-minute calls for my September 2026 launch. This is a space for us to connect, discuss how to get started, and see if we’re a good match for the work you’re looking to do.