Dr. Max Sutton-Smolin

I aim to create a calm but sturdy, trustworthy, mindful, emotionally grounded, and nonjudgmental therapeutic space where you can be deeply curious about your own experience.

A spacious, patient space. A space where you can slow down, breathe, reflect, be silent or quiet. A space where you can be loud, angry, triggered. A space where you don't have to make sense. A space where we can make sense of things together. A space where we are both intensely curious about you.

My approach to therapy is grounded in mindfulness and science-based cognitive-behavioral therapies. I combine these with depth-oriented models including existential/humanistic, psychodynamic/psychoanalytic therapy, and schema therapy.

I am an expert in some things -- some of the sciences of psychology, some of the arts of psychotherapy. But you are the expert on your own life.

I prefer therapy to be a collaborative working process in which we together investigate your life patterns, your inner experiences, and your patterns in relationships.

Like the Room of Requirement in Harry Potter, each session we hold together will be as individually tailored as possible. Every week, you will enter a "room" (a therapeutic dialogue with me) that tries its best to read your mind and heart, figure out how to be of help, and be/say/do whatever may be most helpful.

Concretely, this means that at the beginning of each session, we will together observe how you are feeling. The goal is to quickly and accurately get a sense of your current, present-moment state of mind, so that we can tailor the session plan accordingly to optimally address your current needs in order of importance. We can do this together out loud, including setting an agenda of topics for the hour.