Hello, I’m Trevor, a licensed psychologist providing psychotherapy in Santa Barbara, CA, and virtually throughout California.

I work with adults, couples, and adolescents facing a range of challenges using Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP). This approach goes beyond traditional talk therapy and is especially helpful for those who haven’t found lasting relief with conventional methods.

If you’re new to therapy or looking for a different path, I’m happy to talk about how I can support you.

What Is ISTDP?

Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP) is a powerful, emotion-focused form of therapy designed to help people uncover and resolve the unconscious emotional conflicts driving their symptoms. By working with the body and nervous system as well as the mind, ISTDP helps you access core feelings that may have been buried due to early trauma or attachment wounds.

How Can It Help Me?

When you avoid difficult emotions, it can lead to anxiety, depression, self-sabotage, and relationship struggles. ISTDP helps you face and process these emotions—safely and directly—so you can experience lasting relief. Over time, clients often report greater clarity, emotional resilience, deeper relationships, and a renewed sense of self.

How Is It Different?

Unlike traditional talk therapy, ISTDP is highly active and focused. It goes beyond insight to help you experience deep emotional breakthroughs in real time. Rather than staying on the surface, ISTDP zeroes in on the root causes of suffering and works to resolve them at the core, leading to real, lasting change—not just better coping skills.

Values and Ethical Commitments

  • I’m here not judge you for your life choices. I’m sure you’ve received enough judgment already. I believe good therapy involves replace harsh self-judgment with curiosity, self-compassion, and realistic self-appraisal.

    I’ll never pressure you into changing. My role is to support you while you decide if, when, and how you want to change. 

    I will not pretend to know how you should live your life. I believe in empowering you to get in touch with your own inner compass, not mine.

  • I believe good therapy I about recovering your humanity and dignity. You are more than the symptoms you experience and the diagnoses you carry. You are a complex, unfathomably deep person who is infinitely more than the sum of your symptoms and diagnoses.

  • Therapy doesn’t have to be a mysterious, vaguely defined process. I’m committed to making therapy clear and understandable for you. To that end, I try to use as little psychobabble as possible.

    I strive to be as straightforward and honest as is can. I’ve learned that people can often handle more of the truth than we give them credit for.

  • I am not perfect or all-knowing. I am a wounded healer.I’ve had my share of breakdowns and breakthroughs, wins and losses, just like you.

    I am not a “neutral” therapy bot. I don’t practice in “blank screen” therapy. I believe in being the real me in the therapy room.