Therapy that goes beyond reducing symptoms — into what it is about, what it is asking of you, and what change of life it is pointing toward. In San Antonio and online across Texas.
Depth-Oriented Therapy
Most of the people who arrive at depth-oriented therapy have already tried something else. They have done CBT, or read the books, or worked with a coach, or sat through years of supportive therapy, and gotten some relief — but the deeper question, the one that was actually underneath, has not been touched. Depth-oriented therapy is not opposed to those other approaches. It begins from a different place. It assumes that the difficult thing in your life is often not just a problem to be reduced, but also something asking to be understood — what it is about, what it has shaped, what your life is being asked to become in relation to it. This page describes what that looks like in practice and how I work.
Norman Klaunig, MA, LPC, NCC | Texas LPC #89856 | English and German
At a glance
Approach in plain terms: therapy that does not stop at the symptom — it attends to what the symptom is about, what pattern it is part of, and what your life is asking of you. Not symptom management alone.
Theoretical anchors: Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory and Paul T. P. Wong’s Meaning-Centered Therapy as the primary theoretical frame; existential and relational work in the tradition of Irvin Yalom; transpersonal, spiritually integrative, and trauma-informed traditions
Clinical methods used in service of the work: EMDR; IADC® for grief; parts work (IFS-informed); somatic awareness; mindfulness-based approaches; narrative work; and other focused techniques (SFBT, ACT and IPT elements, Emotional Freedom Tapping [EFT], Written Exposure Therapy) deployed when clinically indicated
Therapist: Norman Klaunig, MA, LPC, NCC
License: Texas LPC #89856
Office: 1528 W Contour Dr, Suite 102, San Antonio, TX 78212
Service area: Online statewide in Texas; in person in San Antonio
Languages: English, German
Insurance accepted: BCBS, Curative, United Healthcare, and Medicare (traditional Medicare and Medicare Advantage plans from BCBS and United Healthcare)
What depth-oriented therapy is
Depth-oriented therapy starts from a simple premise: the difficult thing in your life is often not just a problem to solve, but also a question asking to be heard. Symptoms — anxiety, intrusive memories, persistent sadness, relationship patterns, the sense that the way you are living no longer fits — are real, and we attend to them. We also look at what they are pointing to underneath. The work asks what the symptoms are asking of the life that surrounds them.
This is different from approaches that focus narrowly on reducing the symptom and then ending the work. Depth-oriented therapy treats symptom relief as one outcome, often a meaningful one, but not the only one and rarely the deepest one. The deeper outcome is a different relationship to your own life — a way of living that includes what you have been through rather than working around it.
What this work is for
Depth-oriented therapy tends to be the right fit for people who:
Have tried other approaches and gotten partial relief, but feel that something underneath was not addressed
Want to understand what the difficult thing in their life is actually about, not just how to feel better about it
Are at a juncture — a life transition, a loss, a diagnosis, an unraveling, a discovery — that is asking for more than coping skills
Have an intellectual life and want a therapy that engages it, rather than working around it
Have a spiritual, religious, philosophical, or transpersonal life they want welcomed into the work
Are willing to give the work time
It tends to be less of a fit for people who want:
A short-term, structured protocol for a specific symptom
A therapist who will tell them what their feelings or experiences mean, rather than working alongside them to find out
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Therapy is not a series of techniques applied to a defective part of you. It is a conversation that returns, week by week, to what you are actually carrying and what you are actually trying to find. The pace is yours to set; we slow it where slowing matters and stay with what asks to be stayed with.
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The therapeutic relationship is not background to technique. It is the central instrument of change. In the tradition of Irvin Yalom’s existential psychotherapy, I treat what happens in the here-and-now of the work — what is alive between us in the room — as live data about your inner world, useful to attend to alongside what brought you in. The accepting, present, non-judgmental attention any depth-oriented work requires is the ground from which this operates.
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Grief, trauma, a difficult decision, an existential question, a spiritual experience that does not fit anywhere else — whatever you bring gets attended to on its own terms. We do not translate it into a faster diagnosis or a tidier framework when the experience itself is asking for something different.
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EMDR for trauma. IADC® when indicated for grief, particularly the grief of loved ones lost. Parts work in the tradition of Internal Family Systems for the parts of you that are at odds, with narrative work where the story itself is asking to be reconstructed. Mindfulness-based approaches and somatic awareness for the body’s role in what you are carrying. Other focused techniques — Solution-Focused tools, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy elements, Interpersonal Therapy elements, Emotional Freedom Technique, Written Exposure Therapy — used where the situation calls for them. These are real tools, used where they help. They are in service of the deeper work, not the point of it.
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Paul T. P. Wong’s Meaning-Centered Therapy gives the work a way to address the search for meaning when life has asked more of you than it has given back. Existential themes — meaning, mortality, freedom, responsibility, self-transcendence — are treated as clinically central rather than peripheral.
Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory functions as the meta-map, keeping body, mind, relationships, culture, and spirit in view as parts of one life — not as separate problems to address one at a time. It is less a technique than a map that ensures no dimension of human experience is systematically excluded. When something is happening in one of these areas, the others are usually involved too, and the work that produces real change tends to attend to all of them.
How the work proceeds
Trauma-informed principles govern the pacing throughout, so that what surfaces can be metabolized rather than overwhelm. Spirituality is invited as a real dimension of your self-understanding rather than bracketed as non-clinical.
The arc of depth-oriented work
Depth-oriented therapy does not move in a straight line. Early sessions tend to be about making room — for what brought you in, for the parts of it you have not put into words before, and for the questions that begin to surface once the surface itself stops absorbing all your attention. The pace is slower than symptom-management work tends to be, partly because we are working with more than the symptom, and partly because what we are working with often needs time to be approached.
In the middle stretch, patterns become more visible. The way the difficult thing has shaped you, the choices it has made for you, the ways it has organized your relationships and your inner life — these come into clearer view. This is often the most demanding part of the work. It is also the part where the most genuine change tends to happen, because change at this level is not about doing more or trying harder. It is about seeing what has been operating underneath, and choosing, gradually, to relate to it differently.
Later in the work, the focus tends to shift. The difficult thing has not disappeared, but you are no longer organized around it. The questions become less about how to survive what happened and more about how to live in relationship to it now. For many clients, this is when meaning — in whatever form it takes for them — becomes more central. The work begins to be about the life you are actually living, with the difficult thing as one part of it rather than its center.
When the work ends, it usually ends quietly. Clients tend to know. Sometimes there is a final consolidation; sometimes there is simply less to bring. Either way, the door stays open.
What this work can change
Depth-oriented therapy can change:
Your relationship to the difficult thing — not necessarily that it disappears, but that it stops shaping you in the same way
The patterns that have followed you across relationships, jobs, decisions, and stages of life
The way you make sense of what has happened to you and what is being asked of you now
The kinds of choices you make, and the freedom you feel when making them
Your relationship to mortality, meaning, and what you actually want to do with the time you have
Your relationship to a body, a faith, a culture, or a self that the difficult thing has changed
It rarely promises any of these in a particular timeline. What it offers is a different way of being in the work — patient, honest, in service of what is actually happening rather than what would be easier to address.
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FAQs
Frequently asked questions
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In plain terms: therapy that does not stop at the symptom. We attend to the anxiety, the grief, the relationship pattern, the sense that something is not right — and we also look at what they are about, what they are part of, and what they are asking of your life. The depth orientation does not assume that any specific theoretical school is right; it assumes that lasting change usually requires understanding more than the surface of what is happening, and that the relationship between therapist and client is part of how that understanding becomes possible. The page above describes what this looks like in practice.
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No, though psychodynamic and psychoanalytic traditions both influenced it. Psychoanalysis is a specific Freudian tradition with its own theoretical frame, training pathways, and methods (frequent sessions, the couch, free association). Psychodynamic therapy is its broader contemporary descendant. Depth-oriented is broader still and includes work drawing on existential, humanistic, transpersonal, integral, and meaning-centered traditions, alongside psychodynamic thought. My own work draws on Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory and Paul T. P. Wong’s Meaning-Centered Therapy as primary theoretical anchors, on Irvin Yalom’s existential and here-and-now approach in session, and on contemporary trauma-informed and somatic methods. So depth-oriented in my practice means depth in the sense of attending to what is underneath the symptom — but it is not synonymous with psychoanalysis or classical psychodynamic therapy.
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Cognitive-behavioral therapy and other symptom-focused approaches are excellent at what they are designed to do — change specific thinking patterns, build coping skills, reduce particular symptoms. They are evidence-based and often the right fit for specific presentations. Depth-oriented therapy is not opposed to these approaches; I use trauma-informed and solution-focused tools when they fit. The difference is in what we treat as the goal. Symptom-focused approaches aim primarily at symptom change. Depth-oriented therapy treats symptom change as part of the work, not its entirety, and gives equal weight to what the symptom was about.
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I do not promise that the work will be brief. Some clients work with me for several months. Others work with me for several years. The pace is shaped by what you bring and what you want from the work. I do not push clients to stay longer than the work needs them to, and I do not push them to leave before the work is done.
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Yes, and trauma is one of its central territories. I am EMDR-trained and certified in Traumatic Stress Studies through Bessel van der Kolk’s Trauma Research Foundation. The trauma-informed pieces of the work use the modalities that work for trauma. The depth-oriented piece is what tends to follow trauma work: addressing what the trauma was, what it took from you, and what you are now being asked to live in relation to.
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No. I work equally well with secular, agnostic, religious, and spiritually inquiring clients, and with people whose experiences do not fit any of these categories. The work follows what is true for you, not a particular tradition.
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A first conversation is the best way to find out. Bring what you are carrying, ask what you need to ask, and let us see together whether what I offer matches what you are looking for. The 15-minute consultation does not commit you to anything.
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If your current therapy is working for you, continue it. If you are considering a different kind of work, or if something in your current therapy is leaving the deeper material untouched, we can talk about whether depth-oriented work is a fit. I do not see clients who are in active treatment with another therapist for the same concern, but transitions and consultations are common conversations.
For fees, insurance, telehealth setup, and in-person availability, see the FAQs.
Further reading
The following are credible sources for understanding depth-oriented therapy, the traditions it draws from, and the questions it engages. The list is organized by the tradition each entry belongs to. Most are written for the people who would actually read them; descriptions note which entries are more demanding.
Foundational existential and meaning work
Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning.For general readers: the short, classic book on finding meaning under the most difficult circumstances. The foundational text behind contemporary meaning-centered work.
Irvin D. Yalom, Love’s Executioner and Staring at the Sun.For general readers: accessible existential psychotherapy through case studies (Love’s Executioner) and a clinician’s reflections on the fear of death (Staring at the Sun).
Trauma and the body
Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score. For general readers and clinicians: the standard contemporary book on trauma’s effects on the body, brain, and life — written for a broad audience while still being clinically substantive.
Depth psychology
Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul: A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life.For general readers, the most widely read book on depth psychology in recent decades. A patient, image-rich account of soul-work in ordinary life.
Robert A. Johnson, Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth.For general readers: a short, practical Jungian guide to working with dreams and the inner life. A good first depth-psychology book for someone curious about what this tradition does.
James Hillman, The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling.For general readers ready for a more particular voice: Hillman’s argument that each life carries something it is meant to do, and that depth psychology’s work is to make room for that. Influential well outside therapy.
James Hollis, Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life.For general readers, particularly adults in midlife and later: a Jungian depth-psychological account of the questions that often surface in the second half of life.
Integral and meaning-centered
Ken Wilber, A Brief History of Everything.For general readers ready for a longer read: the most accessible introduction to Wilber’s Integral Theory, written as a dialogue. Probably the best starting point.
Ken Wilber, A Theory of Everything: An Integral Vision for Business, Politics, Science and Spirituality. For general readers: a shorter, applied introduction to Integral Theory for those who want the framework without the dialogue form.
International Network on Personal Meaning (Paul T. P. Wong). https://www.meaning.ca/ — For general readers and clinicians: Wong’s organization; the central resource on Meaning-Centered Therapy, second-wave positive psychology, and the existential positive-psychology tradition.
move from pain to purpose
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move from pain to purpose —