"Seeing differently is the beginning of living differently"
Primary process is a term from psychoanalysis — it describes the mind's earliest, most associative mode of thinking: the layer beneath logic, beneath language, beneath the careful self we present to the world. It is where images surface before words, where intuition lives, where desire is felt before it is named. It is also the part of ourselves we learn, often early and thoroughly, to regulate — because it does not always fit the expectations placed on us.
Not coincidentally, it is where creativity begins.
I'm Avni — a board-certified psychiatrist and artist. I work at the crossroads of mental health and creative practice, helping people find their way back to this deeper register: modes of thinking that are more intuitive, more embodied, and more attuned to what genuinely matters to them.
Seeing differently is the beginning of living differently.
Drawing on clinical training and the lived experience of making — painting, writing, movement, music — I guide clients through exercises, reflection, and integration practices toward a more honest relationship with themselves and the world.
Who I Work With
We live in a world that rewards speed, efficiency, and certainty. Most of us have become very good at thinking in straight lines — at analyzing, planning, and optimizing. These are valuable capacities. But they are not the whole of what we are capable of, and for many people, over-reliance on this single mode of thinking narrows their world — their sense of possibility, their relationship with themselves, their experience of being alive. If that resonates, creativity coaching may be for you. These challenges may show up in the following ways:
In your creative life
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You are an artist struggling with a Block
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You have always wanted to begin a creative practice — writing, painting, music, movement, or any other form — but have never quite started
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You once had a creative practice that mattered to you and have gradually lost touch with it
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You want to take your creative work more seriously but aren't sure how, or find yourself seeking external validation rather than trusting your own voice
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You feel that creativity is somehow not for you — that it is a talent others have and you don't — and suspect that belief may be worth examining
In your professional life
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You feel successful by external measures but privately unfulfilled, as if something essential is missing
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You are navigating a career transition and find yourself uncertain not just about what to do next, but about who you want to become
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You want to build something of your own — a practice, a business, a body of work — but feel unclear about direction or held back by fear
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You have a persistent sense that your work could be more meaningful, more aligned with what genuinely matters to you
In your inner life
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You feel that you have lost touch with who you are beneath your roles, your responsibilities, and other people's expectations
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You are moving through a significant transition — in relationship, identity, career, or simply in your sense of what you want — and feel the need for a thoughtful, unhurried space in which to navigate it
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You notice that you tend to live in your head — analytical, rational, productive — but feel disconnected from a deeper, more embodied sense of yourself
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You find it difficult to sit with uncertainty, to tolerate not-knowing, or to make decisions
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You have a hunger for depth — a deeper way of engaging with your life
In your everyday life
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You feel that your life has become too narrow, too serious, or too driven by obligation — and want to recover a sense of play, curiosity, and spontaneity
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Have a sense that you are passing through your life rather than actually living it — moving too quickly to fully inhabit your own experience
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Want to develop practices that genuinely nourish you, rather than simply recovering enough to keep going at the same pace
What is creativity coaching?
Creativity coaching begins with asking how are you thinking — because the quality of our thinking shapes everything else. Many of the obstacles people face are not strategic but perceptual: they are seeing their situation, themselves, or their possibilities through a lens that is too narrow, too habitual, or too shaped by other people's definitions of success.
This is where creativity enters — not as a subject, but as a method. The creative process is one of the most powerful tools available for loosening fixed ways of thinking, accessing intuition, and developing the kind of honest self-awareness that makes genuine change possible. Whether or not you ever make a painting, thinking like an artist — with curiosity, with tolerance for uncertainty, with a willingness to experiment and begin before you are ready — changes how you navigate everything else.
My background in psychiatry means I bring an understanding of effective behavioral interventions and rigor to this work. My background as a practicing artist means I bring a genuine understanding of what the creative process actually asks of a person — and what it has to teach. Together, these allow me to work at a level of nuance and depth that goes beyond what traditional coaching typically addresses.
This is not therapy. It is not advice. It is a structured, supportive, and intellectually serious space in which to develop new ways of seeing — and to discover that seeing differently is the beginning of living differently.