30
Years in mental health
27
Years of clinical practice
1M+
One million+ readers reached monthly via GoodTherapy.org, as Founder and former CEO
25 years of
providing
IFS therapy
Noah trained in IFS directly with its developer, Richard Schwartz, PhD, beginning in 2002. He went on to assist in IFS trainings, host workshops, and supervise other IFS therapists. In 2007 he founded GoodTherapy.org, one of the world’s leading mental health resources, which he led until 2018.
Some of the things
I help people with...
People come to therapy for many reasons. Some know exactly what hurts, others know that something just doesn't feel right. When something's off it can show up in how you relate to yourself, how you relate to others, how you cope with stress or pain, or in the distance between how you feel and how you'd like to feel.
WHAT I OFFER
Two ways we might work together.
Each begins with a free 15 minute consultation so we can briefly connect and see whether the fit feels right.
Individual IFS Psychotherapy
For adults who want to better understand themselves, work through painful or long standing patterns, and create deeper, more lasting change. My work is strongly informed by Internal Family Systems therapy, which helps us approach the parts of ourselves that struggle, react, protect, defend, or carry hurt and fear with curiosity and compassion, so that old patterns can begin to loosen and new ways of being can emerge.
Couples and Marriage Counseling
For couples who feel distant, conflicted, or caught in patterns they don’t know how to change. Couples therapy can help each person communicate more openly and understand one another more deeply, so that both partners feel heard, cared for, and less alone in the relationship. Along the way, couples begin to recognize the patterns they create together and learn new ways of responding that can bring more understanding, connection, and compassion into difficult moments.
The Search for Something More Meaningful
There are times when what people are longing for is not simply less stress, but something more meaningful, more honest, and more deeply felt in the way they are living. They may have done what was expected, built a life that makes sense, and continued moving forward, yet still sense that some more essential part of them or some feeling is missing. Online therapy can be a good place to begin listening to that longing. Meeting by video or phone makes it easier to start from a private, familiar setting and to stay consistent with the work over time. That steadiness creates room to explore not only what feels missing, but also what has been standing in the way of feeling good, such as old pain and coping skills that may no longer fit who you want to be. Therapy can help you reconnect with what matters most, release whatever has you stuck, and begin living with more depth, vitality, and alignment.
Many people come to therapy at a point in life when nothing is obviously wrong, yet something no longer feels fully right.
They may still be functioning well. They may be succeeding at work, caring for other people, meeting obligations, and staying outwardly steady. From the outside, life can look responsible, productive, even admirable. But internally, something begins to feel harder to name and harder to ignore.
Sometimes it shows up as restlessness. Sometimes as flatness. Sometimes as a quiet sense that life has become too organized around duty, efficiency, or endurance. A person may realize they are doing everything they are supposed to do, but not feeling especially alive inside it. They may feel disconnected from joy, spontaneity, intimacy, creativity, or purpose. They may not be in crisis, yet they know they are no longer living with the depth of connection they want.
This is often where therapy becomes meaningful. Not because a person is failing, but because some deeper part of them is ready for a more honest kind of attention.
When a capable life starts feeling emotionally thin
Many thoughtful adults have spent years becoming highly capable. They learn how to manage pressure, anticipate problems, and keep moving. Those strengths can be real. They may help a person build stability, earn trust, and navigate life with competence. But the same strengths can also make it easy to lose contact with what is happening internally.
When that happens, people often assume they need a new strategy. More discipline. Better habits. More productivity. A clearer plan.
But the issue is often deeper than strategy. Sometimes the real question is whether the way someone has learned to live is still in relationship with their emotional truth. A person can become very skilled at functioning while quietly drifting farther from themselves.
Therapy offers a place to slow down and listen more carefully. It makes room for questions that are easy to postpone in daily life. What feels missing? What has been pushed aside? What inner pressures have been running the show for so long that they now feel normal?
If you want a clearer sense of the overall approach I take, how I help people and what I help people with offer a grounded introduction to the kind of work we might do together.
Meaning often matters more than people let themselves admit
For some people, the longing for a more meaningful life can feel vague or indulgent, especially when there are concrete responsibilities to handle. But the absence of meaning has a real emotional cost.
Without enough inner connection, motivation can start to thin out. Relationships may feel more distant. Pleasure becomes harder to access. Even accomplishments can land with less satisfaction than they once did. A person may keep waiting for the next milestone, the next relief point, or the next sign that life will start feeling fuller again. Often that fullness does not arrive through external progress alone.
Meaning is not only about purpose in a big philosophical sense. It is also about whether a person feels inwardly connected to what they are doing, why they are doing it, and who they are while doing it. It is about whether life feels inhabited.
This is one reason therapy can be helpful during seasons that do not look dramatic from the outside. It can help a person reconnect with values, emotional truth, and parts of themselves that have gone quiet under the weight of routine or pressure.
For those who are still trying to discern what healthy therapy should feel like, my article on how to find the right therapist may help you sense what kind of therapeutic relationship would actually support the work you want to do.
The deeper shift is usually relational
When people say they want more meaning, they are often pointing toward a different relationship with themselves.
They may want less self abandonment. Less internal pressure. Less living on autopilot. They may want to understand why certain protective patterns formed and why those patterns no longer feel life giving, even if they once helped them survive or succeed.
That kind of work is rarely helped by harsh self judgment. Change tends to happen more deeply when there is curiosity, compassion, and enough space to understand the emotional logic underneath the pattern. Instead of asking what is wrong with me, therapy can begin asking what has my system been trying to do for me, and what is it costing now?
That shift can be relieving. It allows people to move away from forcing change and toward understanding themselves more fully. Over time, that can create a life that feels less managed and more genuinely lived.
If you are looking for a therapist in Tacoma, WA, therapy can become a place not only to cope more effectively, but to reconnect with what feels meaningful, honest, and alive in you.
Because this work is personal and vulnerable, it also matters that therapy feels ethically grounded and safe. If that is something you think carefully about, confidentiality in therapy may help answer some of those questions.
Meaning tends to return in quiet ways
People sometimes imagine transformation as one dramatic breakthrough. More often, it begins more quietly than that.
A person tells the truth about how disconnected they feel. They notice how much of their energy goes toward maintaining life and how little goes toward actually inhabiting it. They begin to recognize that what they need may not be more pressure, but a more compassionate and honest way of relating to themselves.
That is often where something real begins.
Schedule a Free Phone Consultation
If this approach resonates with you, you can learn more about Noah or schedule a complimentary phone consultation. That first conversation can help you get a feel for whether this work seems like the right fit for where you are right now.
About Tacoma, Washington
Tacoma is a waterfront city with a strong creative identity, a working history, and a pace that can feel more grounded and textured than many larger urban centers. For many people who live there, daily life can hold both ambition and strain, responsibility and longing. It can be a place where someone outwardly keeps moving while inwardly beginning to ask deeper questions about purpose, fulfillment, and what it means to feel fully present in one’s own life.