Welcome

I’m Morgan, a psychoanalytic therapist in Austin, Texas.

Most of the people who find their way to my office have been the capable one for a long time. They are the person everyone else leans on, and somewhere along the way their body stopped believing it was allowed to rest. Many of them already know a great deal about themselves. They have read the books and filled the journals, and they could probably explain their patterns to me in the first session. What brings them in is that knowing all of it hasn’t made it stop.

I think that’s because we aren’t changed by understanding ourselves in private or in our own minds. We are changed in the company of another person, and that is what therapy is for.

Much of my work is with anxiety and OCD, and with what we inherit from the families we grew up in. I have a particular soft spot for people who love someone with an addiction, or who were raised by one, and who are worn out in a way that is hard to explain to anyone who hasn’t lived it. I work with women who have spent years making themselves small and are getting curious about what happens if they stop, and with men who were never given much room to feel things out loud. Young adults come to me to sort out which parts of themselves are theirs and which were assigned to them. Couples come when they are tired of having the same fight.

In the room, I’m warm and I’m direct. I notice patterns and I’ll tell you what I notice, including the parts that are uncomfortable to hear. We will probably laugh more than you expect, and sometimes grief shows up in the same hour. I don’t think rushing is particularly useful. When something comes up that you would rather skip past, I’ll likely ask us to stay there a little longer.

Change in this kind of therapy tends to be quiet. One day you realize you handled something differently and didn’t have to think about it first.

Areas of Focus

Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents
Adult Children of Addicts
Anxiety & OCD
Attachment & Relationship Patterns
C-PTSD & Complex Trauma
Couples Counseling (EFT + Gottman)
Substance Use & Harm Reduction
Young Adults & Life Transitions

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