You may understand what you want to change and still find yourself repeating the same patterns. Perhaps you continue choosing relationships that leave you feeling unseen. You recognize your tendency to people-please but still feel responsible for everyone else’s emotions. You know perfectionism is exhausting, yet making a mistake feels intolerable. You want greater closeness but withdraw when someone gets too near.
Psychodynamic therapy explores what may be happening beneath these patterns.
At Ritualize, we look beyond the immediate symptom to understand the experiences, relationships, beliefs, and protective strategies that have shaped how you relate to yourself and the world. Together, we become curious about what operates outside conscious awareness, what your patterns may be protecting, and why certain ways of responding continue even when they no longer serve the life you want to create.
Psychodynamic therapy is a depth-oriented approach grounded in the understanding that much of human experience occurs outside conscious awareness. Our earliest relationships and repeated experiences contribute to internal expectations about ourselves, other people, and what is likely to happen next. These expectations can influence whom we trust, how we respond to closeness, what we believe we must do to receive love, and which emotions feel safe to express.
Some of these patterns are easy to recognize. Others may appear indirectly through anxiety, perfectionism, self-criticism, avoidance, recurring relationship dynamics, emotional disconnection, or a persistent feeling of being stuck. Psychodynamic therapy helps bring these patterns into awareness, not so that the past can be endlessly analyzed, but so that you can understand how it continues to shape the present and begin relating to it differently.
- What might this feeling be asking me to notice?
- When did this way of responding begin to make sense?
- What does this pattern help me avoid, preserve, or protect?
- What have I learned to expect from closeness, conflict, success, or vulnerability?
- Which parts of myself have I learned to hide or reject?
- What am I afraid might happen if I respond differently?
- Whose expectations am I still trying to meet?
- What continues to feel true, even when I consciously know otherwise?
Psychodynamic therapy invites us to ask these questions with curiosity and to become brave enough to hear the answers. The purpose is not to assign blame or reduce every present difficulty to childhood. It is to understand the full context in which a pattern developed, including the intelligence and protective function it may once have carried.
We do not make decisions through conscious thought alone. Unconscious expectations, implicit memories, internalized beliefs, emotional associations, and protective responses can influence what captures our attention, how we interpret an interaction, and how we behave before we have fully considered what is happening.
For example, you may consciously believe that you are allowed to have needs while another part of you expects those needs to lead to criticism or rejection. You may want a secure relationship while feeling most drawn to dynamics that resemble what is familiar. You may know that rest is necessary while experiencing stillness as uncomfortable or unsafe.
These contradictions do not mean that you are irrational or unwilling to change. They suggest that different parts of your experience have learned different things. Psychodynamic therapy helps make these internal dynamics more visible. Once we can recognize the expectations and stories influencing the present, we have more freedom to question them, notice experiences that challenge them, and experiment with new ways of responding.
At Ritualize, we do not approach patterns as evidence that something is wrong with you. People-pleasing may have helped preserve connection. Perfectionism may have protected you from criticism or shame. Emotional detachment may have helped you function when feeling became overwhelming. Hyper-independence may have developed when depending on others did not feel reliable.
These responses may create suffering now, but they often began as intelligent adaptations. Understanding the protective purpose of a pattern allows us to approach it with compassion instead of shame. The goal is not to fight or eliminate the parts of you that adapted. It is to help them recognize that other responses may be available now.
Understanding the patterns beneath the surface
What is psychodynamic therapy?
We ask the deeper questions
The conscious and unconscious
Patterns are adaptations, not defects
Psychodynamic Therapy
becoming your future
Self
Our patterns are often formed in relationships, expressed through relationships, and transformed through relationships. For that reason, the therapeutic relationship is an important part of psychodynamic work. The expectations you carry into relationships may also emerge in therapy. You might worry about disappointing your therapist, hesitate to express disagreement, minimize your needs, fear being misunderstood, or feel pressure to present yourself in a particular way.
These moments are not distractions from therapy. They can offer meaningful information about how you have learned to seek connection and protect yourself within it. Together, we can notice these dynamics as they emerge and explore them with honesty, care, and choice. Therapy becomes more than a place to describe relational patterns. It becomes a relationship in which different experiences of communication, boundaries, vulnerability, repair, and connection can occur.
Insight matters. It can bring language to experiences that once felt confusing and reveal patterns that previously operated outside awareness. But understanding where a pattern came from does not always change what happens when you are activated, hurt, afraid, or overwhelmed.
At Ritualize, psychodynamic exploration is integrated with attention to the body, nervous system, emotion, and present-moment experience. We may notice what happens physically as you approach a difficult subject, what emotions arise as you name a need, or what impulse appears when you imagine responding differently. When appropriate, we may move beyond reflective conversation and into experiential work. This allows us to work not only with the story of what happened, but with how that story continues to live in your current emotional, relational, and embodied experience. The aim is to help insight become something you can increasingly feel, practice, and live.
- Repeating patterns in dating, partnership, family, or friendship
- People-pleasing or difficulty setting boundaries
- Perfectionism and persistent self-criticism
- Fear of abandonment, rejection, or emotional dependence
- Difficulty trusting or receiving care
- Emotional disconnection or difficulty identifying what you feel
- Anxiety that persists despite understanding its possible origins
- Shame, low self-worth, or a fragile sense of identity
- Conflict between what you consciously want and what you repeatedly choose
- Major transitions that bring questions of identity to the surface
- A desire for greater self-understanding and more meaningful change
Psychodynamic therapy is not about remaining focused on the past or analyzing yourself indefinitely. The purpose is to develop enough awareness and internal freedom that the past no longer determines the present without your participation. As patterns become more visible, you can begin making choices with greater intention. You may become more capable of recognizing your needs, tolerating vulnerability, responding instead of reacting, receiving healthier forms of connection, and allowing experiences that do not fit your old expectations to matter. The goal is not self-understanding for its own sake. It is a fuller capacity to participate in your life, relationships, emotions, and future with greater agency and self-trust.
Relationships as a place of understanding and change
Insight is the beginning, not the destination
What psychodynamic therapy may help you explore
The purpose of the work
an integrated approach
examines how that interpretation is operating now, what it leads you to notice or overlook, and whether it remains accurate, helpful, or complete.
explores how the pattern influences connection, how it unfolds between people, and how it may emerge within the therapeutic relationship itself.
CBT
Relational
asks where a particular meaning, belief, or expectation came from and how earlier experiences continue to influence the present.
Psychodynamic
notices how the experience lives in the body and nervous system, including the sensations, emotions, impulses, and protective responses that may arise before conscious thought.
Somatic
Category title
At Ritualize, these modalities are not practiced in isolation. A single experience can be understood from several perspectives, and each perspective may reveal something important.
These perspectives work together.
For example, you might understand that your fear of disappointing others developed within an early relationship. We may then examine how that expectation influences your thoughts and choices today, notice what happens in your body when someone is unhappy with you, and explore how the pattern affects your ability to express needs or remain connected during conflict.
At times, we may move beyond conversation and into experiential work. Through body awareness, imagery, movement, breath, sound, gesture, or emotional expression, we can explore what is happening in the present and create space for emotions or protective responses that have previously been suppressed, inhibited, or left without expression.
Experiential practices can also give the body an opportunity to encounter something different. You might practice using your voice, pushing away, establishing a boundary, receiving support, remaining present with an emotion, or experiencing choice where you once felt powerless. The intention is not to manufacture catharsis or force an emotional release. It is to support the body in expressing what is already asking for attention and experiencing new possibilities with awareness, agency, and appropriate pacing.
Our work is responsive rather than formulaic. We draw from each modality according to what you are experiencing, what feels accessible, and what the process is asking for at that moment.
The purpose is not to fit you into a particular method. It is to bring together insight, meaning, embodied experience, and relationship so that change can be understood, experienced, practiced, and integrated across the whole person.
A few common questions we get about our therapy services
What is psychodynamic therapy, and how is it different from other forms of therapy?
Psychodynamic therapy is a form of talk therapy that explores the deeper patterns influencing the way you think, feel, relate to others, and experience yourself. Rather than focusing only on managing symptoms, it seeks to understand how past experiences, relationships, and unconscious patterns continue to shape your life today.
While we'll certainly address the challenges bringing you to therapy, we'll also become curious about the underlying patterns that may be contributing to them. By bringing these patterns into awareness, therapy creates an opportunity to respond to life with greater choice, flexibility, and self-understanding.
Does psychodynamic therapy mean we'll spend every session talking about my childhood?
Not at all. While early relationships and life experiences can offer valuable insight, psychodynamic therapy isn't about endlessly analyzing the past. The goal isn't simply to understand where your patterns began—it's to understand how they're showing up in your life today. Some sessions may explore earlier experiences when they feel relevant, while others may focus entirely on present-day relationships, challenges, or emotions. Together, we'll make connections between your past and present in ways that deepen understanding while keeping therapy grounded in the life you're living now.
What are your fees, and what should I know before getting started?
Individual psychotherapy sessions are $275 for a 50-minute session. Ritualize is an out-of-network practice, which means I do not bill insurance directly. If your plan includes out-of-network benefits, I'm happy to provide a superbill that you can submit for possible reimbursement. Sessions are offered virtually throughout New York, and you must be located in New York to receive therapy services. If you are located outside of New York or are interested in coaching, we offer embodiment coaching as supplemental services.
If you're unsure whether we're the right fit, I offer a complimentary 15-minute consultation. It's an opportunity to discuss what brings you to therapy, ask any questions you may have, and get a sense of whether my approach aligns with what you're looking for.
