Personality difficulties and disorders are deeply rooted patterns of thinking, relating, and coping that occur for a reason. They can be worked with.
Despite your best efforts, the same emotional reactions and relational loops are still there, which is often more frustrating now that you understand them. To make change that lasts, we need to work on a different level to access what your emotional system learned and why it still holds on.
What I see in my practice
Personality difficulties are often framed as fixed labels. In my practice, we view them as deeply rooted patterns of protection and emotional regulation. See if this sounds like you:
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Your emotions feel intense, rapid, and overwhelming, making it hard to find middle ground.
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You experience an intense fear of rejection or abandonment that makes relationships feel fragile.
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You struggle with a persistent feeling of emptiness, self-doubt, or an unclear sense of identity.
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You view situations, yourself, or other people in extremes: all good or all bad.
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You react impulsively when emotionally distressed, only to feel deep regret or shame after.
Rather than pathologizing these responses as character flaws, we treat them as adaptive survival strategies built during formative times. When we work at that core level, these intense reactions lose their necessity.
Most therapy works at the level of awareness and behavior. You understand the pattern, build skills to interrupt it, and practice the new response. For some people, this is enough. For others, especially when patterns are deep, long-standing, or rooted in early relational experience, cognitive insight and behavioral change reaches a ceiling. It can feel like reading about swimming without getting in the water.
Personality-level patterns tend to be organized emotionally rather than cognitively. They live in the felt sense of what is safe, what is expected from relationships, and what you deserve. Changing them requires working at that emotional level.
I draw on Schema Therapy to map what is operating beneath the surface. We look at the schemas, modes, and coping strategies that developed around early experiences. I am trained in Coherence Therapy, which works to access the emotional learning directly rather than managing or overriding it. I also draw on IFS and other approaches when they fit.
What changes
As core emotional learning updates, people working through personality difficulties frequently report these improvements:
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Emotional spikes become less extreme and much easier to navigate without crashing.
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Relationships become more stable as the constant fear of abandonment subsides.
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You form a consistent, grounded sense of identity that doesn’t depend on outside approval.
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The impulse to react recklessly during emotional distress gives way to conscious choice.
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You see yourself and others with nuance, compassion, and realistic flexibility.
This comes from resolving the internal pain at its source.
I’m a therapist in Dallas working with adults whose patterns have proven resistant to insight-based approaches. My work draws on Schema Therapy and Coherence Therapy. We use one to map what is operating, and the other to change it at the emotional level where it lives.
M.S. · LPC Associate · NCC
Supervised by Erin Wysong-Warren, LPC-S.
Currently accepting new clients
In-person (Dallas) & telehealth (Texas)
I’ve been told I have a personality disorder. Is that what you treat?
Yes, though I tend to frame it differently. I work with people who have personality-related diagnoses, and I also work with people who recognize deep, persistent patterns in themselves but have never received a formal diagnosis. The focus is on understanding what is driving the pattern and how to work with it at the level it was formed, rather than treating a label.
What’s the difference between a personality difficulty and a personality disorder?
“Personality disorder” is a formal diagnostic category that implies a clinical threshold and a specific profile. “Personality difficulty” describes patterns of thinking, relating, and coping that are persistent and show up across many areas of life, simply without the all-or-nothing framing of a diagnosis. I tend to think about these things along spectrums rather than as fixed categories, but difficulties that rise to a certain level of intensity and pervasiveness I might label as a disorder.
I’ve been in therapy for years and nothing has changed. Why would this be different?
That’s a fair question. A lot of therapy addresses personality-level patterns through insight, psychoeducation, and skill-building, which is enough for some people. The work I do with Schema Therapy and Coherence Therapy operates at a different level. We work directly with the emotional learning underneath the pattern instead of just trying to understand it. We can figure out if this is the right fit for you during a consultation.
What is Schema Therapy and how does it work?
Schema Therapy maps the deep emotional patterns, called schemas, that develop early in life and persist into adulthood. Schemas are deeply held beliefs and emotional responses about yourself and the world. You might hold beliefs like I am fundamentally flawed, people will always leave, or I have to stay in control or everything falls apart. Schema Therapy also looks at the emotional states and coping styles that activate around those schemas. I draw on it as a framework for understanding what is operating and why certain situations trigger the reactions they do.
How long does this kind of work take?
It often takes longer than most people hope, and shorter than most people fear. Personality-level patterns are deep and took a long time to develop. Most people notice something shifting within the first few months. The pattern becomes more visible, there is more space around it, and some of the emotions begin to change.
Do you offer telehealth?
Yes. I see clients in person at IRR Dallas (4040 N. Central Expressway, Suite 210) and via telehealth for anyone in Texas.
Free 15-minute consultation call.