Why I Named My Practice Descend-to-Ascend
When I first imagined the kind of psychotherapy practice I wanted to build, I found myself returning again and again to a truth I’ve witnessed in both my own life and in the lives of my patients: real transformation does not come from bypassing pain, but from going through it.
We don’t transcend our struggles by avoiding them—we metabolize them by making contact. We gather momentum not by fleeing the depths, but by descending into them with care and courage.
That’s why I named my practice Descend-to-Ascend Psychotherapy and Counseling Services.
This isn’t just a poetic turn of phrase. It’s the structure of the quest itself—the archetypal journey of growth and return, echoed across centuries of human storytelling and inner work. C.G. Jung called it individuation. Joseph Campbell named it the hero’s journey. Tolkien, in his characteristic clarity, called it simply There and Back Again.
Campbell reminds us that the first step of this journey often leads us directly toward what we most fear or resist—because that is where the hidden treasure lies:
“The disgusting and rejected frog or dragon of the fairy tale brings up the sun ball in its mouth; for the frog, the serpent, the rejected one, is the representative of the unconscious deep...wherein are hoarded all of the rejected, unadmitted, unrecognized, unknown, or undeveloped factors, laws, and elements of existence....The herald or announcer of the adventure, therefore, is often dark, loathly, or terrifying, judged evil by the world; yet if one could follow, the way would be opened through the walls of day into the dark where the jewels glow. ”
The descent, in these accounts and stories, is never aimless. The hero ventures into an unfamiliar, often painful realm—not to wallow, but to retrieve something vital or destroy something false. This is as true in therapy as it is in myth. We enter the shadowed terrain of memory, emotion, and meaning not to be undone, but to be made whole.
That’s also why the logo of the practice features a breaching orca. As a child, I was captivated by orcas. Powerful yet graceful, social yet solitary, they struck me as mysterious and majestic creatures. As I grew older, I learned more about them—their intelligence, their emotional depth, their capacity to dive thousands of feet below the surface. And always, they rise again—sometimes in a full-bodied breach that seems to defy gravity itself.
But the breach is not possible without the dive. The leap we witness with such awe—the moment of pure power, joy, vitality, and even triumph—can only be achieved because the orca first went down into the cold, pressurized deep. It is there, in the unseen depths, that it gathers the momentum to propel itself into the light.
The orca teaches us something essential about how to find the very things we most desire—confidence, vitality, love, and a felt sense of purpose. These do not come from skimming the surface or avoiding pain. They come from the courage to descend into the dark waters of our own history, to retrieve what was lost (but never truly forsaken), and to rise more whole. We descend to ascend, not in spite of the descent, but because of it.
This rhythm—down and up, descend and ascend—felt like the perfect emblem for the kind of work I do with patients.
In therapy, we don’t sidestep the hard places. We go there—together. We explore what’s been hidden or feared, not to stay in the darkness, but to emerge with something new: clarity, freedom, selfhood, peace. We descend not to dwell in the depths, but to reclaim what was lost, to make meaning, and to gather the momentum that only the depths can provide.
The reason the hidden thing evokes such fear—and the reason the realm where it lies can take on a nightmarish character—is that we are seeing it through the distorting lens of our own fear and mistrust. This lens makes the exiled part appear loathsome, perhaps dangerous, “judged evil by the world,” as Campbell writes. We come to believe that allowing this part to live in us—or worse, to be seen—would endanger love, care, protection, respect, or belonging. In truth, what is buried is rarely monstrous; it is simply a part of us that was banished for safety’s sake.
Therapy invites us to turn toward this place with a clearer, kinder gaze—to discover that what we once feared might drown or damn us is, in fact, the very force that can lift us. Like the orca breaching from the depths, we rise—transformed, reclaimed, freer than before.
We descend not to stay there.
We descend to ascend.