Why Becoming?
“A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.”
I chose Becoming as the name of my practice because I believe it is the most important foundation of therapeutic work — and of being human. Beyond identifying our labels or healing our wounds, we are always approaching, crossing, and looking back at thresholds of becoming. We are never finished.
Growth isn’t about arriving at some final destination; it’s about staying open, evolving, and allowing life to keep shaping us.
When we forget how to become — when we cling to the illusion that we’ve arrived — we risk cutting ourselves off from growth, humility, and the richness of our humanity.
The Seduction of Arrival
I learned this lesson the hard way. In my 20s, during an intense season of spiritual practice, I felt as though I had “arrived.” After periods of struggle and pain, I touched into experiences of clarity, peace, and the soothing “place” of self-energy. Compared to where I had been, it felt like a radical awakening. I believed I had outgrown earlier versions of myself — and I sometimes extended that judgment toward others.
Later, the same pattern showed up in my professional life. Every training, credential, or certification felt like proof of a new level of expertise, another rung climbed on the ladder of becoming a “better” therapist. My PhD program in psychodynamic psychology was especially ripe for this. I poured myself into case conceptualizations, interpretations, and diagnostic precision. I thought that if I mastered the frameworks, I would arrive at professional mastery.
A Wake-Up Call
Then came a moment I’ll always be grateful for. My doctoral program clinical consultant interrupted my articulate, jargon-heavy presentation and asked me to describe the actual experience of my client — not my interpretation, not the theory, but the living, breathing human moment. I stumbled. Without the labels and frameworks, I realized I had lost touch with something essential: basic empathy.
It was a hard but necessary lesson. Too much knowledge, held too tightly, gets in the way of healing. Expertise without humility creates distance instead of connection.
Always Becoming
Becoming is the antidote to that illusion of arrival. It reminds me — and the clinicians I love working with — that growth is not about reaching for an expert state. It’s about staying open, human, and willing to evolve. It’s about embracing our strength and vulnerability, knowing that our capacity to accompany others depends on our willingness to remain in process ourselves.
For therapists and practitioners, this means allowing the work to shape us as much as we shape it. It means noticing when we hide behind our expertise, and remembering that authenticity, presence, and curiosity heal more deeply than labels or techniques ever can.
Why Becoming Matters in Therapy
In my practice, Becoming is an invitation:
To honor our humanness.
To stay open to growth, even when we want to be done.
To release the illusion of arrival, and embrace the ongoing, dynamic process of living, healing, and evolving.
This is the work I love — especially with clinicians. Together, we can rediscover that therapy is not about proving what we know, but about continually becoming who we are.
