How I Work: An Integrative Experiential Approach to Therapy
What Does Therapy Actually Feel Like?
When people consider beginning therapy, they often find themselves wondering:
What will this actually feel like?
What happens in the room?
How is this different from simply talking about my problems?
This article is meant to offer a clear, grounded window into how I work—what guides my approach, the modalities I integrate, and the core process of emotional change that ties it all together.
Beyond Talking: An Experiential Approach
While traditional talk therapy can offer insight, perspective, and meaningful relief, experiential therapy focuses on something slightly different: the living, in-the-moment experience of emotion, sensation, and nervous system activation.
It is not better.
It simply works at a different layer of the system—a layer where long-standing emotional patterns can finally begin to shift.
At the core of this work is a simple but profound truth:
Our emotional patterns are not random. They are learned.
And because they were learned, they can be updated.
That natural updating process is known as memory reconsolidation, and it is the biological foundation beneath everything I do.
The Heart of the Work: How Emotional Learning Gets Updated
As children—and throughout life—our brains absorb vast amounts of emotional information about:
safety and danger
closeness and distance
worth and shame
what happens when we speak up
what it costs to be ourselves
These emotional learnings settle deeply. They don’t live only as thoughts we can debate or reason with. They live in experiences such as:
the clench in your stomach when someone is disappointed in you
the urge to shut down during conflict
the familiar wave of shame when you have a need
the numbness that appears when things get too close
When one of these patterns comes online, your nervous system is essentially saying:
“I’ve been here before, and I know what this means.”
Memory Reconsolidation, Simply Put
Memory reconsolidation occurs when two things happen together:
An old emotional expectation becomes activated
(e.g., “If I show this part of me, I’ll be rejected”)
In that same emotional space, something genuinely different happens
(e.g., you show yourself and are met with warmth rather than dismissal)
When this happens in a deep, felt way—not just as an idea—the nervous system receives new information:
“Maybe this isn’t as dangerous as I learned it was.”
Over time, the system loosens its grip on old predictions and reorganizes around a more accurate sense of safety, choice, and connection.
Experiential therapy is organized around creating the conditions for this process to occur again and again.
Three Frameworks, One Core Process
I integrate three therapeutic frameworks:
Internal Family Systems (IFS)
Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT)
Psychedelic Somatic Interactional Psychotherapy (PSIP)
Although they look different on the surface, they are all ways of working toward the same goal:
Helping your nervous system learn—at a deep level—that it is safer and more possible to be you than it once was.
Each approach simply supports a different layer of that learning.
Internal Family Systems (IFS): Working With Your Inner Community
IFS rests on a deeply compassionate view of the mind:
Everything inside you makes sense in context.
Over time, especially in response to stress or pain, we develop:
Protective parts
(that manage, criticize, numb, avoid, overwork, or stay on high alert)
Vulnerable parts
(that carry fear, shame, grief, loneliness, or unmet needs)
A core Self
(a grounded capacity for clarity, curiosity, and compassion)
Protective parts stepped in when emotional pain felt too overwhelming or unsupported. These strategies were deeply resourceful at the time—but over years, they can become rigid and exhausting.
In IFS-informed work, we do not try to eliminate parts or force change. Instead, we:
get to know protectors with respect rather than judgment
understand what they have been trying to prevent
create enough safety for them to soften
allow vulnerable parts to be met rather than exiled
As these inner relationships shift, the nervous system begins to expect something different.
This is memory reconsolidation through inner relationship.
Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT): Meeting Emotion Where It Lives
EFT invites us into the immediate experience of emotion itself.
Emotions are not problems to fix.
They are signals related to core needs, such as:
safety
connection
protection and boundaries
dignity and respect
the need to matter
When these needs were dismissed or unsafe to express, emotional patterns adapted. You may have learned to:
shut down
escalate quickly
stay numb
override your own needs
In session, we pay close attention to how emotion shows up as it is happening:
the tightening in your throat as you talk about saying no
the heat in your chest when recalling unfairness
the heaviness behind your eyes when talking about not being chosen
the collapse that comes with shame
the subtle tenderness underneath it all
We slow things down so these experiences unfold in tolerable, manageable waves.
When vulnerable emotion is met with attuned presence, the emotional brain receives a new message:
“I can feel this and stay connected. I am not alone.”
PSIP: Reaching the Deepest Survival States
For some people, core wounds formed before there were words—at the level of survival. These often show up as states rather than emotions:
going blank or far away
chronic freeze or collapse
panic that seems to come from nowhere
constant bracing
emotional flatness
PSIP works directly with these states. With the support of externally prescribed, legal medicines (such as cannabis or ketamine), defenses may loosen just enough for deeper material to become reachable.
My role is not to direct, but to:
help you track subtle bodily impulses
support the completion of interrupted survival responses
offer steady, attuned presence
Memory reconsolidation here occurs at the level of reflex and physiology.
The body learns that what once was inescapable is over.
How It All Comes Together
Although I draw from three frameworks, sessions do not feel like a sequence of techniques.
Instead, the work tends to feel like:
compassionate curiosity about what is happening now
a pace your system can genuinely hold
a weaving together of thoughts, emotions, sensations, and inner parts
On any given day, we might:
explore a protective part (IFS)
stay with emerging emotion (EFT)
support a new bodily response (PSIP)
All in service of one aim:
Giving your system the experiences it needed back then,
so it can learn something new now.
What Sessions Tend to Feel Like
Experiential therapy is still very much a conversation—
with a gentle emphasis on what is alive inside you as you speak.
You are never pushed.
All starting points are welcome:
numbness
overwhelm
uncertainty
Over time, people often notice:
more space around emotion
less panic or shutdown
softer self-criticism
more relational flexibility
greater choice instead of automatic reaction
Not because they try harder—but because their nervous system learns differently.
A Different Kind of Healing Conversation
Talk therapy helps you understand your story.
Experiential therapy helps you feel something different inside it.
At its heart, this approach rests on a simple truth:
You adapted in the best way you could.
Your patterns were solutions, not failures.
Healing is not about fixing yourself.
It is about offering your nervous system what it needed all along:
presence, attunement, and the opportunity to learn something new.
