Jay Woods (they/them)

I practice relational therapy with adults and adolescents who want to better understand how relationships shape emotional life. I pay close attention to patterns that emerge in close relationships, including fear of closeness, conflict, shame, longing, and feeling misunderstood. My work is informed by advanced psychoanalytic fellowships in both adult and adolescent psychotherapy.

I provide trauma therapy for clients living with the lasting effects of trauma, including anxiety, shame, dissociation, relationship difficulties, and feeling cut off from themselves. I work with trauma carefully and at a thoughtful pace, with attention to safety and the ways traumatic experience continues to shape the present. My approach is relational, psychodynamic, and informed by long-term clinical training.

Psychodynamic therapy is at the center of my clinical work. I help clients understand recurring patterns, unconscious conflicts, defenses, and the ongoing impact of early relationships. This approach is especially helpful for anxiety, trauma, relationship problems, identity questions, and feeling stuck. My training includes psychoanalytic fellowships in adult and adolescent psychotherapy.

I work with clients carrying the long afterlife of trauma, including people who feel anxious, ashamed, emotionally cut off, hypervigilant, or caught in painful patterns they do not fully understand. I am especially interested in how trauma continues to shape relationships, identity, and self-experience long after the original events have passed. My approach is thoughtful and paced, with room for complexity rather than pressure to move too quickly.

I work with people whose anxiety can look like overthinking, self-doubt, dread, perfectionism, people-pleasing, or feeling unable to settle inside themselves. Often the anxiety is tied to deeper emotional conflicts, old relational patterns, or a longstanding need to stay braced. I help clients understand what their anxiety may be organizing or protecting, so the work goes beyond coping skills alone and toward a fuller sense of relief and self-understanding.

I work with queer, trans, and nonbinary clients around identity, belonging, shame, family strain, minority stress, and the fatigue of having to explain themselves. I also work with people who are questioning or trying to make sense of feelings that have been hard to name. I aim to offer a space where clients do not have to translate themselves into something more palatable, and where more of who they are can come into view.

I work with queer, trans, and nonbinary clients around identity, belonging, shame, family strain, minority stress, and the fatigue of having to explain themselves. I also work with people who are questioning or trying to make sense of feelings that have been hard to name. I aim to offer a space where clients do not have to translate themselves into something more palatable, and where more of who they are can come into view.

I work with people whose anxiety can look like overthinking, self-doubt, dread, perfectionism, people-pleasing, or feeling unable to settle inside themselves. Often the anxiety is tied to deeper emotional conflicts, old relational patterns, or a longstanding need to stay braced. I help clients understand what their anxiety may be organizing or protecting, so the work goes beyond coping skills alone and toward a fuller sense of relief and self-understanding.

I work with clients carrying the long afterlife of trauma, including people who feel anxious, ashamed, emotionally cut off, hypervigilant, or caught in painful patterns they do not fully understand. I am especially interested in how trauma continues to shape relationships, identity, and self-experience long after the original events have passed. My approach is thoughtful and paced, with room for complexity rather than pressure to move too quickly.

I work with queer, trans, and nonbinary clients around identity, belonging, shame, family strain, minority stress, and the fatigue of having to explain themselves. I also work with people who are questioning or trying to make sense of feelings that have been hard to name. I aim to offer a space where clients do not have to translate themselves into something more palatable, and where more of who they are can come into view.

I work with people whose anxiety can look like overthinking, self-doubt, dread, perfectionism, people-pleasing, or feeling unable to settle inside themselves. Often the anxiety is tied to deeper emotional conflicts, old relational patterns, or a longstanding need to stay braced. I help clients understand what their anxiety may be organizing or protecting, so the work goes beyond coping skills alone and toward a fuller sense of relief and self-understanding.

I work with clients carrying the long afterlife of trauma, including people who feel anxious, ashamed, emotionally cut off, hypervigilant, or caught in painful patterns they do not fully understand. I am especially interested in how trauma continues to shape relationships, identity, and self-experience long after the original events have passed. My approach is thoughtful and paced, with room for complexity rather than pressure to move too quickly.