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Individual Psychotherapy

I believe psychotherapy can be an important experience for self reflection and growth. I make this statement based on personal and professional experience. Psychotherapy can be either short-term (i.e., problem-focused, symptom reduction) or long-term (i.e., increasing self-awareness, satisfaction in relationships, capacity for intimacy).  I use a personality-based approach which means I consider the unique life history, experience and personality style of any person who comes to work with me. My goal is to form a supportive, therapeutic relationship that facilitates exploring emotional states, reducing symptoms, and increasing self-awareness. 

 

The following are some reasons I believe therapy can be beneficial:

 

  • A psychotherapeutic relationship provides psychological understanding, validation, and empathic confrontation.

  • Symptom reduction.

  • Strategies for emotion regulation and managing negative emotional states.  In my experience, negative emotions can be a challenge for even the healthiest people.  Psychotherapy is one of the few places to learn strategies for managing sadness, disappointment, anger, and shame (just to name a few). 

  • Help in adjusting to life transitions (i.e., becoming a parent, marriage, divorce, individuating from parents, etc).

  • Acknowledging and working through traumatic experiences

  • Developing an increased awareness of internal experience and emotional life by putting these subjective experiences into words. Psychotherapy allows for the development of a complex language of emotion or subjective states and the ability to effectively communicate these to others.

  • Becoming aware of motivations outside awareness that affect decisions, experiences, and life satisfaction.

  • Increasing the capacity for satisfying relationships. This may include enhancing your capacity for self-expression, perspective taking, personal agency, empathy, gratitude, and flexibility.  This process involves developing a deeper understanding of your subjective experience, including thoughts, feelings, and beliefs about self and others.

Couples Therapy

In my experience, most couples experience some moments of tension, conflict, and disagreement.  Marriage or couples therapy can help all types of couples identify constructive and destructive communication patterns.   Recognizing these modes of relating can help couples become more thoughtful about resolving conflicts, making important life-decisions, and increasing collaborative communication.  The ultimate goal is to come to a deeper understanding of your partner and your relationship.  This type of treatment often includes increasing your capacity for perspective taking, finding ways to express negative emotions constructively, and expanding open, authentic communication. 

 

People often seek couples therapy for the following reasons: 

 

  • Problematic communication patterns

  • Increased frequency of conflicts

  • Disagreements regarding child rearing

  • Problems with intimacy and sexual relations

  • Broken trust or infidelity

  • Feeling ‘stuck’

  • Substance abuse

  • Adjusting to major life events (i.e., illness, loss, career change, etc.)

  • Problems expressing negative emotions (i.e., anger, disappointment, etc.)

Clinical Supervision

In my view, in the field of psychology, clinical supervision is important for anyone who practices psychotherapy.  Supervision is a forum to present patient psychotherapy cases to senior practitioners and peers for the purpose of getting feedback and guidance to inform the work of psychotherapy.  I believe that supervision is something that thoughtful clinicians engage in throughout their career.

 

Supervision is especially important for early career practitioners to deepen their therapeutic skill sets.  Practitioners who might be looking for supervision include Mental Health Counselors (LMHCs), Clinical Social Workers (LCSWs), Psychologists (PsyDs/PhDs), and Psychiatrists (MDs).  Often these professionals seek clinical supervision both before and after licensure. 

 

Supervision provides an opportunity to work on diagnostic formulations, integrating psychological theory with technique, therapeutic impasses, complex clinical issues, and formulation of interventions. 

 

I have been providing supervision and training to early career professionals over the course of my entire professional career.  I have provided seminars, lectures, and clinical presentations for the purpose of teaching cross-theoretical and integrative approaches to psychotherapy. My belief is that therapists benefit from supervision in an environment that is non-judgmental, supportive, and collaborative.

 

My specific areas of expertise include: 

  • Difficult to treat patients

  • Integrating traditional psychodynamic theory with contemporary psychotherapy modalities

  • Empirically supported treatments for personality disorders (i.e., DBT, TFP, & MBT)

  • Integrative approaches to working with personality disorders

  • Suicidal patients

  • Learning multiple therapeutic languages and understanding their similarities and differences

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