Benji is a direct, perceptive, and intellectually curious therapist who believes effective therapy requires more than simply listening and validating. He asks thoughtful questions, notices patterns that may be difficult to see from the inside, and helps clients understand not only what they are experiencing, but why.
His style is candid, engaged, and collaborative, with a healthy sense of humor. He works especially well with clients who appreciate a therapist who will think alongside them, challenge them when appropriate, and help them make meaningful connections between their past experiences, present patterns, and the choices they make moving forward.
Benji integrates psychodynamic therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) in his work with individual clients. Rather than treating these as competing approaches, he uses them to address two essential questions: Where did these patterns come from? And what can you do differently now?
Psychodynamic therapy looks beneath the immediate problem to understand its roots. Early relationships, attachment experiences, family dynamics, and the ways we learned to protect ourselves can continue to shape how we think, feel, relate, and respond long after the circumstances that created those patterns have changed.
Benji helps clients uncover these connections and understand how earlier experiences may still be influencing their relationships, self-perception, emotional reactions, and expectations of others. The goal is not simply to revisit the past, but to understand the ways it continues to operate in the present.
Cognitive behavioral therapy brings the work into the here and now. Benji helps clients identify habitual thoughts, assumptions, and deeply held beliefs that may be distorting how they interpret themselves, other people, or their circumstances. Together, they examine whether those ways of thinking remain accurate or useful, and develop healthier, more adaptive ways of responding.
By combining these approaches, therapy can address both the roots of a problem and the patterns that keep it going.
Benji’s work with couples is informed by the Gottman Method, an evidence-based approach developed from decades of research into what distinguishes relationships that thrive from those that deteriorate over time.
Couples therapy with Benji is active and practical. He helps partners identify recurring patterns of conflict, understand what is happening beneath those conflicts, and communicate in ways that make it more possible for each person to feel heard and understood.
Rather than simply refereeing disagreements, Benji helps couples recognize the dynamics that repeatedly pull them apart and develop concrete ways to interrupt them. Sessions may include real-time practice with communication, conflict management, emotional responsiveness, and rebuilding connection.
The goal is not a relationship without conflict. It is a relationship in which two people understand one another better, navigate conflict more effectively, and feel more connected in the process.
Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy: A Practitioner’s Guide, Dr. Nancy McWilliams, Ph.D., ABPP
