--- title: "How Alafiora Works: The Approaches and Methods Behind Depth-Oriented Psychological Care" description: "What actually happens in the room, method by method: depth-oriented and psychodynamic work, attachment and emotion-focused technique, trauma-focused and evidence-based practice, harm reduction, and care that makes room for faith, culture, and identity. An overview of every approach this practice uses." url: https://www.alafiora.com/how-alafiora-works practice: Alafiora LLC author: Dr. Esther Lapite-Garrett, licensed psychologist license: https://www.alafiora.com/website-terms-of-use copyright: © Alafiora 2026 note: >- Educational content, not treatment. Reading it establishes no clinical relationship. Every personal account on this page is fiction, written by Dr. Lapite-Garrett from her own clinical knowledge and expertise; she uses AI as a drafting tool and approves every word. No client information of any kind was used to make them. --- # How Alafiora Works **Alafiora · Approaches & Methods · Depth-Oriented · Private Pay** ### An overview of the methods behind the work, and where each one is described in full. [Begin with a First Session](https://book.carepatron.com/Alafiora/Dr--Esther?p=Oo6qVwWRRimYcwZm5qsxxw&s=EbDHmCbO&i=OPJJzQ94) · [Begin with a Consultation](https://book.carepatron.com/Alafiora/Dr--Esther?p=Oo6qVwWRRimYcwZm5qsxxw&s=EbDHmCbO&i=68bi61zK) Most people looking for a psychologist are not comparing theoretical orientations. They are trying to work out whether the person across from them is going to understand what is actually happening, and whether anything is going to change. The methods below exist so that what the work actually involves can be read before it is paid for, rather than taken on trust. Every method below is applied to the same three domains: love obsession and love addiction, compulsive sexual behavior and sex addiction, and sexual trauma. Reading these is useful for a specific reason. They describe what a session is likely to feel like before anyone has paid for one. A person who wants to understand where a pattern came from is describing a different kind of hour from a person who arrived because of the nightmares, and both kinds of hour happen here, and neither has to be chosen blind. --- ## Fourteen Approaches, Four Groups | How This Section Is Organized These are not fourteen services to pick between. They are the parts of one approach, and most courses of care draw on several of them at once, in a sequence that follows what a particular person actually needs rather than a fixed protocol. Nobody is asked to choose a method, and nobody is assigned one because of what they arrived with. The grouping below is by what an approach is for, not by school of thought. Where a method has a real evidence base, that evidence is named and cited on its own page rather than gestured at. **The frame the whole practice sits inside.** The umbrella the rest of the work happens under, and the standards it holds itself to. The place to start for the short answer to "what kind of therapy is this." - /depth-oriented-care - /psychodynamic-therapy - /evidence-based-practice **Working with what drives the pattern.** Attachment, emotion, and the capacity to read one's own mind and someone else's. These are the techniques that address the mechanism underneath a fixation or a compulsion rather than the behavior on top of it. - /attachment-centered-care - /emotion-focused-work - /mentalization-based-therapy - /dream-analysis **Working directly with trauma and with sex.** Specific, named methods for the two domains that most often bring people here, including the honest account of which credentials this practice does and does not hold. - /trauma-focused-care - /sex-therapy - /harm-reduction **Who is holding the treatment plan, and what gets to come into the room.** Care that does not require a client to leave part of themselves at the door, and that treats the direction of the work as the client's to set. - /consent-oriented-care - /culturally-attuned-identity-affirming-care - /faith-based-counseling-therapy - /spiritual-counseling-therapy --- ## One Psychologist, One Approach | Why the Method Never Changes Hands Every approach on this page is held by the same clinician. [Dr. Esther Lapite-Garrett](https://www.alafiora.com/meet-the-psychologist-dr-esther) is a licensed psychologist whose doctoral training was in clinical psychology, grounded in psychodynamic theory and the treatment of complex, overlapping presentations. There are no associates, no rotating providers, and no case handoffs at Alafiora, which is why a course of care can move between these methods without anyone starting over. That structure is what makes drawing on several approaches at once possible rather than chaotic. A client whose trauma history is driving a compulsive pattern is not referred out to a second clinician for the second half; the same person holds both, in the same hour, using whichever of these methods the work actually calls for that week. Where those hours happen, and on what terms, is set out on [Where Alafiora Practices](https://www.alafiora.com/where-alafiora-practices). What none of this is: a fixed protocol, a manual worked through in order, or a promise about how long anything takes. The [Getting Started](https://www.alafiora.com/getting-started) page describes how a first conversation actually begins. [BEGIN WITH A FIRST SESSION] ---