I do IFS and Somatic Experiencing for personal growth, healing and awakening.
What it looks like to work with me. If you'd rather get a sense of the ideas first, they're below and in the framework pages, and Work With Me is there anytime.
There's a lot of foundational material here that might help you on your path, whether or not we ever work together.
The Operating System You Never Chose
Something's been running your life--your choices, your relationships, your sense of what's possible--and you didn't install it.
The Hum, a two-minute film
I made it about the low hum a lot of us are living with. Best with sound, and a quiet minute to yourself.
You inherited it. From family, culture, and the strategies your system developed to keep you safe--long before you had words.
I call it the Dominant Mindset. And once you see it, you can't unsee it.
How It Shows Up
You might recognize it in different places:
In Your Relationships
The distance you can't close. The fights that replay. The part of you that controls intimacy because real closeness feels like a trap.
In Your Work
The success that feels hollow. The achievement that doesn't satisfy. The exhaustion that vacation doesn't touch.
In the World
The cruelty that's out in the open now. The lying that doesn't even bother to hide. The pattern you can suddenly see everywhere--and can't unsee.
Inside You
The critic that never rests. The performer who's exhausted. The part that pushes through when your body says stop.
Different symptoms. Same operating system.
What You Weren't Taught
Here's what I've learned working with people who've "done the work" and are still stuck:
You're not failing. You're using tools that worked somewhere else--in territory where they can't help.
Most of us were taught there's one undifferentiated blob called "me" and one set of tools to work on it. Push harder. Open your heart. Be more mindful.
There are three identities:
- Who you are as yourself
- Who you are in a we: a couple, a family, a group
- Who you are as part of everything: the whole of life
And three potentials in each:
- Power -- your ability to act, to hold boundaries, to have impact
- Love -- your ability to connect, to care, to receive
- Presence -- your ability to stay with what's actually happening
When something's stuck, you can ask: Which identity am I in? And which potential is hard to reach right now?
That's the beginning of the map.
Why You Never Got This Map
You were taught a different operating system. One that said:
- Power means control. If you're not winning, you're losing.
- Strength means never needing. Vulnerability is weakness.
- Love is earned through performance. Connection has strings attached.
- Presence is dangerous. Feeling too much makes you soft. Stay in your head.
This wasn't installed by villains. It was passed down through generations--in families, in institutions, in the invisible assumptions of "how things are."
It shapes how men learn to be men and how women learn to survive. It's the training underneath the training.
That's the Dominant Mindset. Until it's seen, its rules feel like reality.
The Harder Question
Here's where it gets real.
Once you start seeing this pattern in the world--in the cruelty, in the systems, in the people who can't seem to see themselves--a harder question emerges:
Where is this pattern running in me?
Not "am I as bad as them"--that's not the question. The question is: Where has this operating system colonized me?
Where do I control when I could connect? Perform when I could be present? Extract when I could receive?
Most people never ask this question. They project the pattern outward and call it righteousness.
But if you're willing to look--really look--at how this thing runs in you? That's where transformation actually happens.
And that's where support matters. Because looking at your own patterns without something to hold you? That's how people shatter.
There's a Map
The framework I teach--the Matrix of Self--maps the territory underneath the pattern.
Nine squares, three identities by three potentials. Each is a place you can locate yourself, and somewhere you can grow.
| POWER | LOVE | PRESENCE | |
|---|---|---|---|
 WITHIN | Can I reach my strength as myself? | Can I feel held, and grateful to be here? | Can I see what is, inside? |
 BETWEEN | Does my strength stay online in a we? | Is real depth available in a we? | Am I present in a we? |
 ALL | Can I act for the whole? | Do I belong to the whole? | Can I see the whole? |
What Actually Helps
Here's what I've learned about change that lasts:
You can't think your way through this. The pattern lives in your nervous system, not just your thoughts. Understanding it intellectually doesn't change how your body responds.
You can't fight it with its own weapons. Rage, dominance, and urgency are the Dominant Mindset's tools. Using them to fight it just feeds the pattern.
You can't bypass it with spirituality. Transcendence that skips over reality is just dissociation in yoga pants.
What helps:
- Framework -- A map so you're not lost in what you're seeing
- Capacity -- Room to stay with what you feel, a breath at a time, instead of numbing it, distracting from it, or rushing to fix it
- Practices -- Things to do with your body and attention that metabolize overwhelm
- Companionship -- Being with people who see what you see
- Guidance -- Someone who knows the map, walking it with you until it's yours
Our cravings, our grief and our aversions all live as sensations in the body. Below some threshold of presence with ourselves, they push us away from ourselves; above it, the same discomfort can draw us further in. I made a short free course about this, called Within.
This isn't about feeling better. It's about building what holds you so you can stay awake, stay human, and keep moving--even when it's hard.
This Is For You If...
- You keep repeating patterns you thought you understood
- Your relationships have a distance you can't close
- You've achieved success and feel hollow
- You can see a pattern in the world and can't unsee it
- Your usual tools (therapy, meditation, exercise) aren't touching something deeper
- You're exhausted from performing a version of yourself
- You want framework, not just validation--understanding, not just support
- You're willing to look at how the pattern operates in you, not just "out there"
This Is NOT For You If...
- You're looking for someone to tell you it's not that bad
- You need immediate crisis support (please reach out to a crisis line)
- You're not ready to look at your own patterns--only others' patterns
- You want certainty about what to do (no one has that)
The Work
I use Internal Family Systems (IFS) and somatic approaches--not as techniques to fix you, but as ways to meet what's actually happening in your nervous system.
We work with the parts of you that are terrified, enraged, frozen, or numb. We don't override them. We help them trust that something else can hold what they've been carrying.
My goal is that you learn to guide yourself. The framework becomes yours. The practices become yours. I'm not interested in being your permanent guide--I'm interested in you becoming competent to navigate your own system.
About Eric
I've been in session with people since 1995, helping them navigate what can't be thought through--only moved through.
I'm an IFS-certified and SE-certified practitioner. I trained with founders Dick Schwartz (Internal Family Systems) and Peter Levine (Somatic Experiencing), and spent 20 years in Pathwork spiritual development and helpership training. I also spent 20 years as a general contractor--I know what it means to build things that actually hold.
I discovered my own autism at 60, after a lifetime of performing neurotypical without knowing I was performing. I know what it's like to suddenly see the water you've been swimming in.
The Dominant Mindset isn't just something I study. It's something I survived--and learned to see clearly enough to help others see it too.
Based in Los Angeles. Working with clients virtually throughout the US and worldwide.
Next Steps
A few ways to keep in touch with this work, in no particular order.
The notes
I write now and then about what holds an ordinary life up, and what happens when it doesn't. Free, and easy to leave.
Read on SubstackWorking with me one to one
Individual sessions, by Zoom or in person. The first conversation is free, to see whether it fits.
Ways to work with me