Depth Therapy.
Looking to really get to the root of your life issues?
• Wanting to create lasting change in your life?
• Looking to get a deeper perspective on your concerns, rather than just learn tips, tricks, and “quick fixes”?
• Craving increased connection to spirituality, the unconscious, myth, art, images, symbols, and dreams?
• Wanting to reconnect with your soul?
Depth therapy addresses both the root and the symptom.
If any or all of the above questions resonate with you, you might be one of the many people who feel the urge to understand and experience life and self on a deeper level. Maybe you’ve had therapy before and, while some aspects may have been helpful, you left feeling like something was missing. Perhaps the progress you made didn’t “stick” as time went on.
Maybe you’re feeling tired of living on autopilot and looking to live a more soulful life. Or perhaps you’ve realized your spirituality and your personal growth work are actually the same thing, and you’re looking for a supportive space to explore this interconnection further.
A depth psychotherapist can be a valuable, skilled guide to help you get to the root of the issues you’re wanting to navigate. Working with a depth therapist also helps you connect more deeply to your essence.
When you plumb your depths with the support of a depth therapist, a treasure chest of insights, gifts, strengths, and pearls of wisdom is often uncovered. This treasure chest might otherwise go undiscovered with solutions-based approaches that mainly focus on symptom reduction without exploring underlying causes. Depth therapy addresses both the root and symptom.
What is depth therapy?
Depth therapy weaves together age-old global wisdom, the groundbreaking work of 20th-century psychology pioneers, and current neuroscience research. The term “depth therapy” is actually an umbrella term that describes a range of approaches. The common threads that weave through all of these approaches are an interest in the unconscious (the part of our psyche that lies under the surface of everyday awareness) and an emphasis on the soul (the part of the psyche where the personal and transpersonal, or spiritual, interface).
As a depth therapist, I help people get to the root of the issues they’re wanting to work through. In other words, I help them to get to the crux of the matter: where the issue originated, what its story is, what about it might want to shift, etc. I do this by helping to gently bring what’s unconscious into greater awareness. Further, I help to facilitate an increased connection with the soul, inner wisdom, intuition, and the world at large. In my depth therapy practice, I use the following modalities to facilitate these processes in a sensitive but potent way:
• Transpersonal therapy: A holistic approach that views human psychology as much more than just “fixing what’s wrong.” Transpersonal therapy focuses on human potential, spirituality, spiritual experiences, creativity, integration of spiritual and plant medicine experiences, and global wisdom traditions. Many people find this psychospiritual way of working to be inspiring, enriching, and profoundly supportive.
• Jungian psychotherapy: A modality based on the work of Carl Jung that incorporates working with dreams, myths, stories, symbols, artmaking, archetypes, and more. While this way of working naturally appeals to creatives and spirit seekers, it can also appeal to curious, open-minded people who feel have felt “stuck” in their head and would like to experience a different perspective.
• Expressive arts therapy: The use of artmaking for therapeutic purposes, including but not limited to visual arts (i.e., drawing, collage, painting, photography), writing, poetry, music, movement, storytelling, sand tray, and drama. Art therapy can help to calm anxiety, reduce stress, stimulate creative problem-solving abilities, and put people in touch with their inner wisdom.
• Somatic therapy: A term used to describe a variety of body-based approaches that, among other things, can help mediate the effects of chronic stress and resolve trauma. Examples of somatic therapy that I use include Somatic Experiencing®, movement, and breathwork.
• Attachment-based talk therapy: An approach where the therapeutic relationship itself is used as an instrument of change. With this form of therapy, emphasis is placed on the therapist creating a warm, nonjudgmental space where the client is invited to explore what emerges in real time in their interaction with the therapist. This form of therapy also looks at relationships with caregivers early in life, which create the templates for other relationships later on.
For further reading, check out these articles:
Frequently Asked Questions
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Depth therapy is an umbrella term for a family of approaches that share two core commitments: a serious engagement with the unconscious, and an honoring of the soul. The unconscious is the part of the psyche that lives below the surface of everyday awareness—the source of our patterns, complexes (emotionally charged groupings of thoughts, beliefs, and memories organized around a central theme), dreams, and deeper motivations. The soul is where the personal and the spiritual meet.
Rather than focusing primarily on symptom reduction or behavioral change, depth therapy asks the deeper questions. Where did this pattern originate? What is it trying to protect or communicate? What wants to shift? The goal is not just to feel better—it's to understand yourself more fully and live more authentically.
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Most conventional talk therapy works from the "top down"—engaging the thinking mind to identify patterns, challenge unhelpful thoughts, and build new behaviors. While this can be genuinely useful, it tends to stay at the level of conscious awareness.
Depth therapy goes further. It works with what lives below the surface—the unconscious material that shapes our lives whether or not we're aware of it. This includes unexamined beliefs, relational patterns rooted in early experience, and complexes (emotionally charged clusters of memories, images, and associations organized around a central theme, such as worthlessness, abandonment, or the need to be perfect).
Complexes form early in life, often in response to painful or overwhelming experiences, and they tend to operate automatically—shaping our reactions and choices in ways we don't always recognize.
Depth therapy also works with shadow material and the deeper questions of meaning and purpose. It tends to work more slowly and more thoroughly than conventional approaches. For many people, it produces changes that feel more lasting and more real than therapy focused primarily on symptom relief. -
The unconscious is the vast part of the psyche that lies outside our everyday awareness. It holds our memories, our unprocessed experiences, our instincts, our dreams, and the patterns and beliefs that shape our behavior without our conscious knowledge.
Carl Jung understood the unconscious as not only a repository of what has been repressed or forgotten, but as a living, dynamic source of creativity, wisdom, and guidance.
In depth therapy, we work to bring what's unconscious into greater awareness—not to eliminate it, but to develop a more conscious relationship with it. This often produces a significant shift in how people understand themselves and their lives. -
Jungian therapy is one of the primary lineages within depth therapy. It draws on the work of Carl Jung and includes working with dreams, archetypes, the shadow, active imagination, myth, symbol, and the process Jung called individuation—the lifelong movement toward becoming more fully oneself.
Depth therapy is the broader category. It includes Jungian approaches as well as other depth-oriented lineages such as transpersonal psychology, attachment-based relational therapy, and psychodynamic approaches. My work draws on all of these, with a particular grounding in Jungian and transpersonal psychology.
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Depth therapy is generally a longer process than solution-focused approaches. It is thorough by design—we're working at the root, not just the surface. That takes time.
That said, the duration varies considerably depending on your needs, goals, and what you're bringing to the work. Some people do a focused period of depth work on a particular issue and then take time to integrate before returning. Others engage in ongoing work over a number of years. The choice is always yours.
What I can offer is that we periodically check in on how the work is going, what feels alive, and what might be shifting—so the therapy always has a clear North Star and remains in genuine service to you.
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No spiritual background or practice is required. Depth therapy is not affiliated with any religious tradition, and it does not ask you to adopt any particular belief system.
That said, depth therapy does take the soul seriously—understood not necessarily in a religious sense, but as the dimension of experience where meaning, purpose, creativity, and the deeper questions of life reside. Many people find that working at this level feels more honest and more nourishing than approaches that leave these dimensions out. Others engage with it primarily on a psychological level. Both are completely valid. If something is drawing you to depth work, that curiosity itself is a meaningful starting point.
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No. Jungian analysis is a specific and highly specialized form of training that requires an extensive multi-year program at an affiliated Jung Institute.
While I have studied Jungian psychology formally and informally for nearly 25 years—including at the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco, the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, and New York University—I am not a certified Jungian analyst.What I offer is modern depth therapy that is informed by Jungian psychology and its clinical applications integrated with somatic work, expressive arts therapy, and attachment-based relational therapy through an anti-oppressive, trauma-competent, and social justice-informed lens.
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The shadow is a concept from Jungian psychology that refers to the parts of ourselves we have disowned, suppressed, or never been allowed to develop. These are not only the "dark" parts—the shadow also contains qualities that were shamed or discouraged in us, including strengths, desires, and capacities that didn't fit the environment we grew up in.
What we don't acknowledge in ourselves doesn't disappear. It operates below awareness—showing up in our relationships, our reactions, our patterns, and sometimes our physical symptoms.
Working with the shadow isn't about becoming worse. It's about integrating what has been cast off, which tends to free up energy, expand emotional range, and open access to parts of ourselves we didn't know were there. -
Transpersonal psychology is a branch of psychology that addresses the full spectrum of human experience—from our deepest wounds to the heights of human potential and spiritual experience. It holds that human beings are not only physical and psychological beings, but also spiritual ones—and that a psychology that ignores the spiritual dimension misses something essential.
In practice, transpersonal therapy makes room for existential questions, spiritual experiences, creativity, and the interface between personal growth and a larger sense of meaning and purpose. It draws on wisdom from many traditions without being beholden to any of them. Many people find this way of working to be genuinely expansive and nourishing.
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The three are deeply complementary. Depth therapy provides the overarching orientation—the interest in the unconscious, the soul, the deeper patterns. Somatic therapy brings the body into the room alongside the mind. Expressive arts therapy offers a direct way to access and give form to unconscious material through image, movement, sound, and story.
Together, they address the whole person—mind, body, and soul. This is what "modern depth therapy" means in practice: an approach that is grounded in depth psychology but integrates the body and the creative imagination as equal partners in the work.
Our purpose calls to us, louder and louder.
“But even as we fall out of grace with respect to our purpose we draw closer to it, because it calls to us, louder and louder. The more we distance ourselves from it, the more we lose our will, drive and energy, and we are forced to look for a way to find them again.”
—Sobonfu Somé