love your life. live well in love.™
dr rae sandler simon | licensed clinical psychologist
"As we cultivate peace and happiness in ourselves,
we also nourish peace and happiness in those we love."
- Thich Nhat Hanh
Life is beautiful, messy, overwhelming, and unpredictable. Our work will help you understand your incredible strengths. We will also determine the areas that need attention and adjustment in order for you to live an authentic life. Often times, the healing and lightness comes from simply recognizing your humanity. Learn to honor what you feel, observe and acknowledge emotions, and understand their source and driving powers behind your experiences, thoughts, behaviors.
We will determine the best plan for supporting your journey when life, moods, feelings, and thoughts feel out of balance. We will incorporate both Eastern and traditional Western medicine practices, depending on your need and preferences. I have an incredible team of colleagues, including primary care doctors, to whom I refer for traditional medication, Chinese medicine and acupuncture, yoga, massage, and more.
Learn more about my therapeutic approach and areas of expertise by clicking on your identifying treatment course below.
My Approach to Individual Work
No two people arrive in therapy for the same reasons, and no two paths through it look the same. I draw from multiple evidence-based frameworks and tailor my approach to what you actually need. I do not use a one-size-fits-all protocol; rather, I utilize a thoughtful, evolving plan built around you. My style is warm, direct, and grounded in the belief that you are already whole. Sometimes you just need help remembering that.
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
The way we think shapes the way we feel. CBT helps you identify the automatic thoughts, mental filters, and deeply held beliefs that drive anxiety, depression, self-criticism, and avoidance. You may not even realize how much of your suffering is being generated by interpretations rather than facts.
Together, we’ll slow down the space between what happens and how you respond, examine the stories you’re telling yourself, and build more accurate, compassionate ways of understanding your experience. This work is practical, concrete, and often produces meaningful relief quickly, which is why it’s one of the most well-researched approaches in psychology.
Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT)
Life involves pain. That’s not a failure, it’s the human condition. ACT helps you develop psychological flexibility: the ability to be present with difficult emotions (grief, fear, uncertainty, shame) without being controlled by them. Rather than fighting what you feel or waiting for the discomfort to disappear before you start living, ACT asks: What matters to you? And can you move toward that, even when it’s hard?
In our work together, this might look like learning to notice anxious thoughts without obeying them, making room for grief without being swallowed by it, or reconnecting with values you’ve lost touch with under the weight of depression, people-pleasing, or burnout. ACT is especially powerful for anyone who has tried to think their way out of suffering and found that it isn’t enough.
So much of what drives our present-day struggles has roots we can’t see. It may be the families we grew up in, the messages we absorbed about who we should be, or the early experiences that taught us what was safe and what wasn’t. Psychodynamic work is about making the unconscious conscious: understanding the patterns, defenses, and relational templates that are quietly running your life so you can choose something different.
This is often the deepest layer of our work. It’s where we explore why you keep ending up in the same kinds of relationships, why certain situations trigger you disproportionately, or why you sabotage the things you want most. It’s not about blaming your past, it’s about understanding it clearly enough to stop repeating it.
Developed by Terry Real, RLT is most known as a couples therapy model. I also use its principles extensively in individual work, and it’s one of the most powerful tools I have. RLT helps you understand how you move through the world relationally: Do you tend toward controlling, performing, avoiding vulnerability (known in RLT as grandiosity /one-up)? Or toward deferring, shrinking, abandoning your own needs (known in RLT as shame /one-down)?
Most of us learned these adaptations in childhood, and they made sense at the time. But they’re often the very patterns that are now undermining your self-worth, your relationships, and your ability to ask for what you need. RLT is direct and honest ( I’ll name what I see) and it’s rooted in the belief that you deserve to show up in your own life with both strength and vulnerability.
Sometimes you don’t need to go deep, you need to go forward. Solution-Focused Therapy shifts the conversation from what’s wrong to what’s possible. Instead of spending sessions analyzing the problem, we focus on your preferred future: What does your life look like when things are working? What are you already doing, even in small ways, that moves you toward that?
This approach is collaborative, empowering, and often surprisingly efficient. I find it especially helpful when you’re feeling stuck. Many get caught in a loop of overthinking, indecision, or learned helplessness and need to reconnect with your own agency and resourcefulness. It’s a reminder that you have more capacity than you think.
Integrative & Mindfulness-Based Practices
Underneath everything I do is an integrative philosophy that honors both Western evidence-based psychotherapy and Eastern practices including mindfulness, breath work, movement, and intentional presence. I believe that lasting change isn’t just cognitive, it’s embodied. Your body holds what your mind tries to manage, and learning to listen to it is one of the most transformative things you can do.
In session, this might look like a grounding exercise when anxiety is running high, a body scan when you’re disconnected from what you’re feeling, or a simple pause to breathe before we move into something difficult. These aren’t add-ons. They’re woven into the fabric of how we work together, because real healing happens when your whole self... mind, body, and spirit... is in the room.
What This Looks Like in Practice
In our work together, you can expect me to be warm, present, and direct. I won’t just listen. I’ll reflect, teach, and sometimes lovingly challenge you. Sessions often include a blend of conversation, insight, and real-time practice of new ways of thinking, feeling, and responding. I don’t believe in a one-size-fits-all approach, and I’ll never force you into a framework that doesn’t fit. Instead, I draw from all of these modalities fluidly, choosing what serves you in each moment.
My goal is not to keep you in therapy forever. Rather, it’s to help you build the self-awareness, skills, and inner steadiness to navigate your life with confidence long after our work together ends. Some clients come for a handful of sessions to work through something specific. Others stay for months, doing deeper work. And many return after a long break, sometimes years later, when a new chapter brings new challenges: a career shift, a health crisis, a loss, a relationship that’s asking something new of them, or a season of life that simply feels heavier than expected.
That’s not a setback. That’s how good therapy often works. I think of individual therapy as building a foundation of self-understanding you carry with you. We will create a safety net that supports you not just in crisis, but in the ongoing, courageous work of living a life that actually feels like yours.
