Individual Therapy
Integrative Depth Psychology for Adults in California and New York
Licensed Psychologist, PhD · Telehealth · California & New York · LGBTQ+ affirming
Are You Feeling Stuck in Patterns You Can't Quite Explain?
Breaking free of old patterns, even ones you can see clearly aren’t working anymore, can be frustratingly difficult. Some people can describe exactly what they keep doing and have spent years trying to change it. Others simply sense that something is off, a heaviness, a restlessness, or a feeling they cannot quite put into words. Either way, my role is to help identify what’s keeping those patterns in place, where there’s room for genuine change, and how to begin moving forward.
Anxiety, depression, addiction, and relationship struggles often have a deeper architecture than they first appear to. Together, we work beneath the surface of these struggles, loosening what has kept them in place and creating the conditions for lasting change in a direction that better aligns with how you want to live.
You may notice the following patterns:
Breaking free of old patterns, even ones you can see clearly aren’t working anymore, can be frustratingly difficult. Some people can describe exactly what they keep doing and have spent years trying to change it. Others simply sense that something is off, a heaviness, a restlessness, or a feeling they cannot quite put into words. Either way, my role is to help identify what’s keeping those patterns in place, where there’s room for genuine change, and how to begin moving forward.
Anxiety, depression, addiction, and relationship struggles often have a deeper architecture than they first appear to. Together, we work beneath the surface of these struggles, loosening what has kept them in place and creating the conditions for lasting change in a direction that better aligns with how you want to live.
You may notice the following patterns:
Repeated conflict in intimate relationships
Anxiety that has become a fact of life
Self-criticism that persists despite real success
Cycles of closeness and withdrawal
Addictive or numbing behaviors that briefly relieve stress
A career or creative pursuit that’s stalled or leaving you burned out
Patterns like these rarely come from nowhere. Whether or not you can trace them, they tend to grow out of well established emotional templates, shaped by early life relationships, by what you lived through, by the family and cultures around you. Depth psychology works at these various levels. In addition to helping you manage troubling symptoms, we also explore what’s driving the ongoing distress, so the pattern itself can begin to give way and become something that fits your current life.
Symptoms often reflect remarkably intelligent attempts to help us survive: anxiety warns of danger; withdrawal seeks safety; perfectionism strives toward excellence. When a symptom becomes painful, it may be signaling that the strategy is ready for change. Depth-oriented therapy offers a space where that change can begin to take shape.
Ready to talk this over? Schedule a free 20-minute consultation
What Makes Integrative Depth Psychology Different?
Each of us carries a vast inner world: memories, inherited and ancestral patterns, a lifetime of conditioning that quietly shapes how we love, work, and protect ourselves. Depth psychology holds that inner world as central to the work. Instead of treating a symptom as something to switch off, it asks what the symptom is doing for you, and what it might be protecting.
Depth-oriented work becomes integrative by combining it with other approaches suited to what you’re facing, detailed below.
Think of the work less like fixing a problem and more like tending a garden. Sometimes what’s needed is more water: emotional processing, or diffusing a hard memory. Sometimes it’s more light: encouragement, structure, or an action plan. Knowing which approach fits the moment is an ongoing conversation between us, not a predetermined program. Here are the main approaches I use:
Depth psychology: working with the unconscious and relational patterns running underneath the surface, dream work, and early childhood concerns
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR): a technique designed to target and process specific traumatic memories
Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT): mindfulness-based practices for steadying the nervous system and grounding in the present moment
LGBTQ+-affirmative care: a lens that shapes the work with queer and trans clients and allies
Psychedelic-assisted therapy: supporting preparation and integration of psychedelic experiences, helping you make sense of what emerges and how to carry it forward. Contact us to learn more
I bring structure and guidance to this work, but it is always responsive to your pace, your autonomy, and your aspirations.
What Concerns Bring Adults to Individual Therapy?
People reach out when something stops working. A relationship that keeps hitting the same wall. Anxiety that doesn’t let up. Grief, a loss of direction, a success that somehow feels hollow. Sometimes it is a single clear crisis, and sometimes it is the slow sense that life looks fine from the outside while something underneath will not settle.
Clients often come navigating:
Many of the people I see hold down a lot of responsibility, the ones others lean on, while feeling unsettled in private. As a queer-affirming depth psychologist based in California and New York, my work frequently serves the LGBTQ+ and creative professional communities. My practice also reaches beyond any one group, and is often an excellent fit for those who are seeking depth-oriented work and value the change that can occur with dedicated self-reflection. Whatever your orientation, identity, or background, the work starts with your particular story.
What to Expect, and How Online Therapy Works
Getting started begins with a free 20-minute consultation, a chance for you to tell me what is bringing you in, ask anything you want about how I work, and get a sense of whether we fit. If it feels right, we take care of some brief paperwork and schedule your first full session.
Early sessions are about understanding the shape of what you are carrying and what you want to be different. From there the work finds a rhythm. Most clients meet weekly, which builds the continuity this kind of work depends on, and some choose twice weekly during more intensive stretches. Sessions are 50 minutes. Over time, the focus tends to move from the immediate pressure that brought you in toward the patterns underneath it, the growing edge where real change happens.
All sessions are conducted online via secure video, which means geography is rarely a barrier. Whether you are in a busy city, a quieter town, or traveling between coasts, we can make it work. My practice is kind of like an old-world boutique shop off a winding road, one you can now visit from wherever you happen to be.
AVAILABLE TO RESIDENTS OF
Have more questions? The FAQ covers the ones I hear most.
What It Means to Work With an Experienced Psychologist
Before I became a psychologist, I directed theater. I found that psychotherapy allowed me to take my interest in working with life stories further, including toward healing, which carried particular meaning to me as I became an older adult.
Theater and therapy share something. Both are about how we make meaning out of suffering, and find creativity and connection in the middle of it.
That sensibility still shapes how I sit with people. Behind it sits thirty years of clinical experience, across community mental health, hospital, academic, and private practice settings. As a licensed clinical psychologist and depth psychologist, I have spent those years learning how lasting change actually happens, and how it does not.
My aim is to help you find relief, along with an ongoing realization of what brings steadiness, coherence, and value to your life and relationships.
Dr. Silverstein in his Los Angeles office.
My background includes:
- Licensed clinical psychologist, California and New York
- UCLA Neuropsychiatric Hospital, 2003 to 2011
- Private practice since 1997
- Advanced training in EMDR, MBCT, depth therapy, Dialogue Therapy, LGBTQ+ affirmative therapy, and psychedelic-assisted therapy
- Core faculty, Antioch University, Spiritual and Depth Psychology, in Los Angeles
Individual Therapy Details
Let's See If This Is a Fit
The best way to know whether we should work together is to talk it over. A free 20-minute consultation gives us both a sense of whether there is a good fit between my approach and what you are needing.
Contact: (424) 294-8591 Email: drmsilverstein@gmail.com
I respond to all inquiries within one to two business days.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is depth psychology, and how is it different from other kinds of therapy?
Depth psychology looks beneath your symptoms to the patterns underneath, the ones shaped by early relationships, trauma, and culture. Where a more symptom-focused therapy manages what shows up on the surface, depth work follows it to the root so the pattern itself can change. In my practice it is integrative, which means I combine that deeper work with practical, evidence-based tools like EMDR and mindfulness-based methods, so you get both room for exploration as well as a focus on the solutions that matter to you.
Do you offer online therapy in California and New York?
In New York, I am in-network with Aetna. For all other plans in New York and California, I work as an out-of-network provider. I provide a superbill so you can submit for reimbursement through your PPO plan. If you’re unsure how this works with your plan, I’m happy to help you figure it out.
I've tried therapy before and still feel stuck. Can depth therapy help?
I respond within one to two business days. We will start with a free 20-minute consultation, a conversation to see if we are a good fit. If we both feel ready to move forward, I will send paperwork and we will schedule your first session.
Who do you work with?
Yes. My practice is open to anyone ready to do this kind of work, regardless of identity, background, or orientation. I have expertise in LGBTQ+ affirming care, and I have also found that this orientation can offer non-queer clients more room to expansively view their own sexualities and gender expressions.
Do you offer trauma therapy or EMDR?
It depends on what you are working on. Some people come to address a specific difficulty over a period of months. Others stay longer, using therapy as an ongoing space for reflection and growth. There is no set timeline—we can find what fits, and adjust as the work unfolds.
What makes your work LGBTQ+ affirmative?
How long are sessions, and how often do we meet?
Do you take insurance?
Do you offer a sliding scale?
Do I need to be interested in dreams or spirituality?
Have more questions? Check out our frequently asked questions →