Identity, Career Issues, Relationships, and Life Transitions
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Psychotherapy for concerns beyond formal diagnoses, in person and via telehealth, based in Dupont Circle. Click the Free Consultation button to schedule with Dr. Levine.
My Approach to Concerns Beyond a Diagnosis
Many of the reasons people come to therapy don't fit into neat diagnostic boxes.
There are many reasons people seek therapy, and the reality is that a lot of them don't fit into diagnostic categories like depression, anxiety, or OCD. People have come to me for support with questions of identity, with relationships, with major transitions. Some want to explore their religious faith or spirituality. Some are struggling with a conflict between their values, or with ambivalence about a particular area of their life. And sometimes people simply want help working through a past experience they don't know how to make sense of or integrate into the story of their life.
These concerns call for a flexible approach that balances insight and action.
There is no one-size-fits-all treatment for concerns like these. Addressing them usually draws on a wide variety of approaches, and it incorporates a principle I return to in all of my work: the need for a balance of insight and action. We'll work to understand whatever the issue is, and we'll also work to find concrete steps you can take toward a resolution.
My role is to help you understand your own mind, not to tell you what to do.
This is especially important when someone comes in seeking support with uncertainty or ambivalence, or wanting to make a particularly important decision. My job is to be your therapist, not your judge or jury. I’m not here to tell you what you should or shouldn’t do; that is up to you, and your values. Instead, I see my role as helping you understand your own mind better so that you can make the best decision for you. For many people, this can be frustrating. People sometimes want to come into therapy and have the therapist hand them the answer, or just tell them which direction to take. If only I had that kind of wisdom. Unfortunately, I’m not a genie or an oracle—I’m a therapist. My role is to help you make decisions in the way that makes the most sense for your life and your values. I do this by helping you to clarify what your values really are and their relative importance to one another, improving your ability to apprehend your own mind and behavior without distortion or disavowal, and supporting you in building the necessary skills which afford you the agency inherent in the capacity for acting intentionally rather than reflexively, mindlessly, or in a manner which is continually beholden to unregulated emotions and unconscious processes.