Andrew Bertell, LCSW-C

Therapy is for being known by someone who isn't trying to get anything from you. This helps you to better know yourself and grow in ways that are meaningful to you. It's for discovering that the things you're most ashamed of are survivable when spoken aloud. It's for having a relationship that doesn't require you to perform. It's for the slow work of becoming more free.

I work with people managing anxiety, depression, relationship troubles, and questions about who they are or might become, among many other presenting problems. I work with people who are stuck, with professionals navigating career conundrums, people untangling relational difficulties, and people in transitions wondering what comes next. I work with college and graduate students sorting out what it means to become themselves while meeting others' expectations, and with medical students and residents navigating the particular pressures of clinical training. I've also spent years working with addiction, trauma, psychosis, and severe personality struggles.

I don't assume I know your experience. I'm here to learn who you are, not fit you into a framework and give you pat, formulaic instructions on how to be. I'm interested in all the parts of you, including the ones that don't fit neatly into categories—and the ones you're not sure about yet.

My approach draws on psychoanalytic thinking, attention to the body's intelligence, and what happens between two people in a room trying to be honest with each other. We pay attention to how your history lives in your present, how patterns show up before you notice them, how relationships become stages where old scenes get replayed. Sometimes that means sitting with something heavy. Sometimes it means noticing what you almost said, or what your body knew before you did. Sometimes it's just figuring out what you actually want, or growing more comfortable in not knowing.

We work at your pace. My aim isn't to radically change you or to make you happier (though that may happen), but to help you become more interested in yourself, more able to bear your own experience, more capable of the relationships and work and creativity that will make your life feel lived rather than just endured.

Not sure if therapy is for you? That's a fine place to start. Reach out and let's talk.