Third Alternative Counseling
Washington, DC
Depth-Oriented Psychotherapy

Virtual therapy for adults ready to look underneath the surface — where the real situation, and the way through it, tend to live.

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Most difficulty arrives as a choice between two things. The work is finding the third alternative.

Stay or leave. Fight or accommodate. Accept what cannot be changed, or keep struggling against it. Become someone different, or remain who you have been.

The presenting binary is rarely the actual situation. It is the framing the difficulty arrives in. Clinical work, when it functions, tends to surface a third alternative — not a compromise between the two original options, but a different way of holding the situation that was not visible while the binary was running.

The third alternative is not always available. When it is, it tends to come from understanding the situation more deeply rather than from choosing between the original options more decisively. That is the work I do.

About

How I work

I'm a Licensed Professional Counselor offering depth-oriented psychotherapy to adults of all identities via telehealth. I draw on Alfred Adler's recognition that human beings strive toward meaning and significance, on existential thinking about what it costs to live authentically, and on relational psychoanalytic understanding of how early relationships organize adult patterns. More on the traditions behind my work →

In practice, this means I'm interested in what is actually happening in your life and in the patterns underneath it — not in fitting your experience into a framework that doesn't match it. I engage genuinely with what you bring rather than performing professional listening. I'm direct when directness serves the work and patient when patience serves it. I'll push back on patterns that aren't serving you, and I'll wait when the work needs to develop at its own pace.

Most clients arrive with more capacity to do their own work than they've been crediting themselves for. Therapy is often about creating the conditions for that capacity to operate rather than supplying answers from outside.

Focus

What I work with

Anxiety. Depression. Complex grief. Relationship and family-of-origin dynamics. Work and career transitions. Identity questions. Trauma and its developmental aftermath. And the broader sense that something isn't right that doesn't yet have a clearer name.

I have particular experience with high-functioning professionals whose external success hasn't produced the felt experience of meaning or wellbeing they expected it to.

Working together

Individual & couples work

Individual therapy

$200 / 50 min

Ongoing, open-ended depth work — the core of my practice, oriented toward sustained developmental change rather than symptom management alone.

Couples & marital work

$250 / 50 min

Work with couples on the patterns that become visible only when both people are in the room — offered both as marital therapy in its own right and, for individual clients, as focused work when bringing a partner in would serve the treatment.

Fit

Whether the work is a fit

Some people want directive, solution-focused work that targets specific symptoms over a defined period. That's legitimate work, and I'll refer you toward it when it's the right fit. My work is different — more open-ended, more interested in the deeper architecture organizing your patterns, oriented toward change that lasts. The clients who do well with me tend to be those who want to understand themselves more fully and are willing to do work that takes time.

Background

Training & practice

I graduated from the University of Scranton in 2000 and have continued my professional development through twenty-five years of clinical practice and self-directed study across psychology, philosophy, and related fields. Ongoing intellectual engagement with the work is part of what I bring to the room.

Fees & logistics. $200 per 50-minute individual session; $250 for couples. Held virtually via telehealth for adults located in Washington, DC.

Payment by cash, check, Venmo, or Zelle. I don't bill insurance directly; on request I can provide a superbill for possible out-of-network reimbursement.

Getting started

The first step is an email

Tell me a little about what's bringing you in, and we'll set up a time to talk.

Email to get started
Toggs2@aol.com  ·  ☎ 410-908-6407