Laura Werner Larsen

We - as humans - at times get anxious, sad or blocked. Psychotherapy helps through creating space around the suffering so that new possibilities for living can be found. I combine a gently curious, accepting and collaborative approach with a secure therapeutic framework to help people work, love, and play better.

I specialize in longer term, depth-oriented therapy with young adults and adults who are pursuing change or struggling to adjust to it. My experience living and working in four countries has made me especially attuned to issues having to do with life transitions, living between two or more cultures, and cross-cultural relationships.​ I enjoy working with people of all sexual and gender identities.

My fundamental approach to therapy is psychodynamic. This means broadly that I believe that the causes of psychological suffering are not limited to biochemical imbalances in our brain or thinking styles that are under our conscious control. Therapy, in order to bring about change and relieve suffering, needs to attend to multiple levels of our experience, including feelings, thoughts, conflicting desires and parts of ourselves, and repeating processes and patterns that we may or may not be aware of. I am interested in the ways clients are affected by both their past experiences and their current situation, including culture and society, race, ethnicity, and gender and sexuality.
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Depending on the clients' needs and personal qualities, I combine aspects of the psychodynamic approach with other evidence-based therapies, such as mindfulness, IFS (Internal Family Systems), ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy), and Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy. I believe that the best possible psychotherapy work requires attentiveness to each particular experience and thus flexibility and creativity.

I am a cross-cultural, multilingual (English, Finnish, German, Swedish) licensed psychotherapist. In addition to practicing psychotherapy, I am also a psychoanalyst.

I usually meet with clients weekly, but also offer intensive, more than once a week psychotherapy, which can be very effective when clients feel deeply shaken or stuck, or are pursuing profound, long-lasting change in their lives.