ABOUT ME

Cara Brown

“We meet ourselves time and again in a thousand disguises on the path of life.”

— Carl Jung

I hold an undergraduate degree in fashion design, and the first fifteen years of my career were spent as a professional fashion and interior designer. I have always been drawn to psychology, and after a career in design, I pursued a Master’s degree in Counseling Psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute, a program with a longstanding focus on Jungian and psychoanalytic psychology. Like design, where form follows a deeper function, my personal passion for psychology centers on exploring the underlying unconscious aspects of the psyche that drive individuals to engage with or retreat from the world. Through my personal journey and academic exploration, I aim to guide others in encountering themselves—whether the disguise is familiar or new—each time with an expanding awareness and compassionate acknowledgment of their unfolding life path.

MY APPROACH

My personal style as a clinician is humorous, warm, honest, and empathetic. I practice from a psychodynamic perspective, grounded in analytic and psychoanalytic theory. In practice, I am compassionate and collaborative, balancing supportive and expressive techniques as needed to help people recognize patterns of relating, explore their emotional depths, and uncover meaning in their experiences. 

Every person is unique, and the therapeutic encounter is a deeply connected experience. As a result, psychotherapy is highly individualized to the client. While honoring each person’s individuality, I also recognize that as human beings, we are not so different from one another, and many of our sufferings run in similar veins. I work well with people who are navigating their identity and how it can be expressed in the world, processing early childhood wounds, struggling with religious trauma, understanding neurodivergence, and working through grief and loss. As a former designer, I have a unique insight into the creative experience, which allows me to provide empathy and understanding to creatives struggling to express themselves fully. Mostly, I enjoy sitting with people who are curious and seek to better understand themselves and others.

WHAT IS THERAPY LIKE?

  • Therapy is relational and requires cultivating consistent, genuine attunement between the client and therapist. As a therapist, this means being responsive to the client’s inner world, tuning into their emotions, and resonating with their experience without imposing any expectations or judgments. Genuine attunement between the therapist and client creates a space where the client can feel seen and understood, experience relational ruptures and repair, and engage curiously with the things we do not yet understand.

    Photo Credit: Rachel DiDonato

  • Addressing trauma, grief, loss, and the parts of ourselves we would rather ignore is hard. Holding space for the client to curiously explore themselves in a supportive space crucial to the process of therapy. The aim in fostering this space is that the client can begin to feel truly held by the therapist, allowing themselves to feel secure in the therapeutic relationship. Then, therapy can begin to address the things that make us uncomfortable, and the thing that make us feel whole.

    Photo Credit: Emily Krouse

  • The therapeutic process involves journeying into the hidden layers of your psyche—those aspects that lie just beneath conscious awareness that shape and influence your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. From a depth psychological perspective, this process is about turning inward with curiosity and courage, engaging with symbols, dreams, and emotions that emerge in the therapeutic space. To discover patterns and meanings that may initially feel elusive. Together, we gently bring these unknown aspects into the light, allowing them to be witnessed and integrated, expanding your sense of self and opening new pathways to psychological wellness.

  • Therapy is a place to grapple with parts of yourself, your experiences, or your interactions with others that feel uncomfortable, challenging, or even sharp. Maybe you are prickly in the way you connect with yourself or how you connect with others. Often, these are aspects of ourselves that we avoid or suppress—old habits, painful memories, defensive patterns, or ways of reacting that may no longer serve us. By acknowledging and working with these prickly parts in therapy, we can soften the rough edges with honesty and compassion, bringing awareness to the ways they impact your daily life and relationships. This process allows you step out of old cycles and gently reshape your responses and choices, turning what once felt rigid or reactive into opportunities for embodied living and transformation.

    Photo Credit: Rachel DiDonato

  • Throughout the therapeutic process, self-awareness emerges again and again as gradual guidance through the layers of the inner world. As we work together to explore your experiences, challenges, and aspirations, an expanded self-understanding begins to unfold, often quietly, until it becomes undeniable. This awareness is the result of engaging deeply with yourself, honoring both your strengths and vulnerabilities, and confronting the patterns that have shaped you. In this newfound clarity, you begin to see yourself and your choices with fresh insight, empowering you to live more intentionally and authentically. Emerging awareness brings not just insight but also flexibility to respond in new ways, aligned with the person you’re becoming rather than the patterns of the past. This is the heart of transformation—stepping into a fuller sense of aliveness, with an expanded capacity for feeling and possibility grounded in a deeper truth.

    Photo Credit: Nina Roder

THERAPY FOR . . .

  • INDIVIDUALS

    Individual therapy to cultivate an inner awareness of your wants, needs, and patterns.

  • COUPLES

    Couples therapy focused on attunement, understanding, and reparative experiences together.

  • KIDS & TEENS

    Therapy to understand and ride the waves of a tumultuous and exciting period of growth.