Identity Exploration Therapy in Seattle

Your body is constantly changing, as a basic condition of being alive. Consider this: the lining of your gut replaces itself every 4-5 days; your red blood cells live around 120 days and are replaced with 250 million cells every day. 10% of your bone structure turns over each year, meaning your whole skeleton effectively renews itself every decade. You are a body in constant renewal. Therefore, it makes sense that understanding your unique identity as a person is not a task that is “one and done.” It is ongoing work, revisited across a lifetime, involving the self you were and the self you’re always becoming.

Our bodies age, our careers shift, our family systems change and grow, and we are only just beginning to understand the wiring and workings of our minds. Maybe a word finally fits something you’ve felt for years. Maybe you feel ready to shed an identity others assigned you, one that no longer fits.

Most identity work comes down to a gap between how you’ve been understood — by yourself or others — and who you actually are. Sometimes that gap opens slowly, through a lifetime of small adjustments and private contortions. Sometimes it opens all at once, from a conversation, diagnosis, or realization that reorganizes everything that came before it. Either way, identity isn’t one fixed thing to discover — it’s built in layers, tested against experience, revised as you go. Throughout this work, I will meet you with genuine curiosity and affirming acceptance, with the goal that, at some point, you’ll meet yourself in the same way.

Coming out is not a single event. Rather, it’s an ongoing process that can begin at seventeen or forty-seven or seventy-two. Coming out happens over and over — with a new partner, a new job, a new chapter of life. I work with clients of all ages, navigating sexual identity, gender identity and transition, asexual and aromantic identity, questioning, and identities still being discovered and named.

For many adults, a late ADHD or autism diagnosis reframes the past as much as it clarifies the present. The relief of finally having language for how your mind works is often tangled up with grief for the years you spent believing you were failing, careless, or “not trying hard enough.” I work with clients navigating late-identified ADHD, autism, and sensory processing differences. Together, we separate who you are from the story you came to believe about yourself.

My approach to identity work starts with the premise that you are not one thing. You are many parts working together, and some of those parts showed up to protect you a long time ago and never got the memo that it’s safe to stand down. A part of you might be holding the belief that questioning your identity is dangerous. Another part might be exhausted from constantly translating yourself for people who were never going to understand. Somewhere underneath the protection is usually a part that was exiled along the way — a younger, more vulnerable part that is still carrying the original shame, grief, or fear that made the protection necessary in the first place.

This is what this approach looks like in practice: I use Internal Family Systems (IFS) to help you get curious about your parts rather than stay at war with them — the part that wants to hide, the part that wants to come out to everyone tomorrow, the part that’s still grieving the years you spent not knowing. None of these parts are the problem. They’re all trying to help, even when their strategies are outdated. We slow down enough to hear from each one, understand what it’s protecting, and build enough trust between your parts and your core Self that integration becomes possible. We don’t force a tidy resolution, but make room for all of your parts to be discovered, thanked, and heard.

I am with you in this process, paying attention to where you are, and never rushing you toward a preconceived notion of where you “should” be. Identity development isn’t linear — most people move through recognition, resistance, grief, testing, and eventual integration, sometimes cycling through more than once, and sometimes with different timelines for different parts of identity. We will work at whatever pace is right for you, mindfully moving through your process to prevent overwhelm.

What we might work on

• Sexual identity and coming out, at any age
• Gender identity and transition
• Asexual, aromantic, and questioning identities
• Neurodivergent identity — ADHD, autism, sensory processing differences
• Late identification as neurodivergent
• Feeling disconnected from yourself or unable to connect with others
• A sense that something important is missing
• Identity shifts during major life transitions (career change, divorce, retirement, loss)
• Ripple effects of coming out within a family system
• Boundary-setting within (and beyond) family systems

This work can take place in individual, couples, or family sessions, depending on what best fits what’s happening for you. Learn more about services.

Identity rarely changes in isolation. When you come out, receive a late diagnosis, or simply start becoming someone your family didn’t expect, the people close to you are affected too. They may feel grief, relief, resistance, or acceptance. A partner may need their own space to process what your new understanding means for the relationship. Parents may need time to adjust their understanding and expectations, and may never fully arrive at acceptance. Deciding who to tell, when, and how much explanation you owe anyone takes time to discern, and you may want support with setting boundaries that protect you while all of that settles. This is why identity work doesn’t only happen one-on-one. I work with individuals, couples, and families to navigate coming-out discernment, the ripple effects of a new identity or diagnosis, and the boundaries that can provide support while a family system finds its new shape.

My graduate training included coursework in Human Growth & Development Across the Lifespan, Trans-Affirming Counseling, Human Sexuality, and Somatic Theory & Oppression — the foundation for the work I do now. I strive to maintain competency under the Association for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Issues in Counseling (ALGBTIC)’s Competencies for Counseling, and I’m a member of the Society for Sexual, Affectional, Intersex, and Gender Expansive Identities (SAIGE), a division of the American Counseling Association. Beyond that, I regularly read the clinical and academic literature on sexual identity development, gender identity, and asexual and aromantic experience, because this is a field where the frameworks that serve clients best continue to evolve.

Before becoming a therapist, I spent over 22 years as an attorney. That background makes me a natural systems thinker — someone looking for the pattern underneath the presenting problem. In identity work, that orientation matters: the presenting question (“am I gay,” “should I tell my parents,” “why does this diagnosis feel like grief”) is rarely the whole story. There’s usually a deeper structure underneath it — patterns within the family, work, and community systems you’re already part of. Seeing that structure clearly is what helps you prepare for what comes next: settling into your identity, and setting the boundaries that keep you healthy within those systems.

This work is for anyone trying to make sense of their identity — a word you’re trying on, a diagnosis you just received, a coming-out conversation you’re building toward. You don’t even have to know the question you’re trying to answer just yet. What you need is a sense that something about how you understand yourself is shifting, and a willingness to explore what that means.

This is also for people whose identity question doesn’t come with a name yet — who feel disconnected from themselves or others, who sense something is missing, or who are moving through a major life transition that has unmoored their sense of who they are. Whatever the reason you’re questioning, there’s room for it here.