"There's no one giant step that does it. It’s a lot of little steps.” Cohen
Maybe you’ve done a lot of thinking about why you feel the way you do. You understand the patterns, you know where some of them came from, and yet you still find yourself reacting in ways you wish you could change. You may pull away when you want connection, overthink interactions, look to others for reassurance, shut down when things become too much, or feel like you’ve lost touch with what you actually want or need.
This is where our work can go deeper.
Together, we get curious about what is happening underneath the symptoms or patterns that brought you to therapy. We explore the experiences and relationships that shaped how you learned to connect, protect yourself, manage emotions, and understand who you needed to be in order to feel safe, accepted, or loved.
We may explore the past, but we do so to understand how it is living in the present—in your relationships, your body, the way you talk to yourself, and the ways you respond when you feel hurt, overwhelmed, disconnected, or uncertain.
My work is depth-oriented and integrative, drawing from relational, attachment, somatic, cognitive, and mindfulness-based approaches. Rather than relying on one technique, we pay attention to what is happening within you and between us, allowing the work to meet you where you are.
To me, finding an **even keel** doesn’t mean becoming unaffected by difficult emotions or always feeling calm. It means developing a steadier relationship with yourself—one that allows you to experience uncertainty, connection, conflict, vulnerability, and change without losing yourself in the process.
Many of the patterns that frustrate you today developed for a reason. We approach them with curiosity rather than judgment, understanding what they have been trying to do for you while creating space for something different.
Over time, the goal is not to become a different version of yourself. It is to feel more at home within yourself—to trust what you feel, understand what you need, connect with others without abandoning yourself, and have more freedom to choose how you want to move through your life.
Jennifer Macchiaverna
LCSW LCDC EMDR-Trained
