What I Offer
I offer four different types of treatment:
While “psychotherapy” and “counseling” are often used interchangeably, I use these two terms to indicate different levels of treatment. Counseling has a more limited scope than psychotherapy: counseling aims at specific situations or problems in current life, whereas psychotherapy aims at longer-term or underlying issues. In counseling, the therapist’s role is to provide “counsel,” i.e., advice, to help the client successfully deal with and/or resolve current issues. In psychotherapy, the therapist’s role is to promote psychological change and emotional healing (just as a physical therapist’s role is to promote physical healing and change). I am available to work with clients in either way, and sometimes one leads to the other.
Counseling
Some clients come to therapy for advice and support regarding a current situation or difficulty. In working with clients in this capacity, I draw upon my training in a wide variety of therapeutic modes (see Education, Training, and Professional Experience) as well as my breadth of life experience and my practical, problem-solving inclination. This role involves more “talk therapy” than other aspects of my practice.
Psychotherapy
Although I have worked with clients on a variety of issues over the years, my psychotherapy practice now is focused on:
- Childhood trauma including abuse (physical, sexual and psychological) and neglect: healing from the emotional, psychological, and developmental effects of trauma and neglect in infancy, childhood, and/or adolescence -- effects such as PTSD, depression, anxiety, attachment problems, difficulties with intimacy and/or sexuality, and self/identity issues.
- Sexual abuse and other violence in adulthood: healing from experiences of sexual violence -- rape (including date and acquaintance rape), molestation, sexual harassment and inappropriate intimacy from people in positions of authority(teachers, clergy, coaches, and so on) -- as well as domestic/partner violence, abuses of power in relationships, and other experiences of violence.
- Anxiety, panic, and chronic worry -- learning ways to manage anxiety so that it does not develop into panic; “unlearning” the habit of chronic worry; “defusing” particular sources of anxiety and worry; learning to relax the body and the mind.
- Personal growth -- understanding oneself, clarifying one’s focus and direction, identifying personality traits and habits of mind and behavior that have created difficulties in relationships, work, health; developing alternative ways of seeing and interpreting experience, acting and responding to life.
- Women’s issues -- life transitions, self-nurture and self-care, relationship issues, postpartum adjustment and identity issues, body and eating issues.
My treatment approach for the above issues combines EMDR, Imaginal Nurturing, Lifespan Integration, somatic and mindfulness practices, cognitive/behavioral techniques, ego state work, and supportive relational therapy. If the client is interested, we also make use of the Enneagram model for understanding personality and psychological growth -- though less so when the treatment is focused on trauma.
Brief Psychotherapy for Single Trauma
When a person has experienced a trauma such as an accident, a rape or an assault, the discovery of a partner’s affair, sudden illness or loss, EMDR can be extremely helpful. It can (1) reduce the immediate distress caused by the experience, (2) alleviate symptoms resulting from the experience such as PTSD, anxiety and depression, self-doubt and so on, (3) prevent the development of further psychological or emotional damage which can result as the brain “hard-wires” around the trauma, and (4) help the client put the experience behind her/him and move forward. If the client does not have a history of trauma or other mental health issues, treatment in these cases can be brief. Sometimes, of course, other issues surface and lead to more extended psychotherapy or counseling.
Parenting Support
A specific type of counseling I offer is parenting support. Having taught parent education for eight years to parents of toddlers and infants in co-op preschools, and having spent several years in postgraduate study of infants’ emotional development and parent-child attachment, my expertise is in the early years -- parenting of infants, toddlers, and preschoolers.
“Parenting support” encompasses a wide variety of possible help. I can provide support and perspective during the postpartum adjustment to parenting, which is a very difficult transition for many women and for couples. I can provide information about developmental stages (what’s normal, what to expect), temperament traits and their impact on parenting, and approaches to “discipline” (managing behavior). I can provide practical, problem-solving help regarding day-to-day issues like tantrums, sleep routines, feeding/eating issues, sibling conflicts, and adjustment to new schools and caregivers. I can provide suggestions regarding fostering self-esteem and emotional intelligence. And I can provide support for parents regarding the physical and emotional demands of parenting and its impact on their mental health, their personal lives, their intimate relationships, and their relationships with their own parents.
One special area of interest for me is how parenthood activates feelings from one’s own childhood. Memories from our own experiences as children are stored in both the “explicit memory” and “implicit memory” centers in the brain -- as conscious memories (we remember particular experiences as well as things like how our parents treated us or what we did when we were upset) or as unconscious memories (we feel we “have no memories,” yet we have emotional and physical reactions in response to certain stimuli that remind us of our childhood). Once we become parents, these emotional memories from our childhood, conscious and unconscious, tend to surface in our interactions with our children, impacting our behavior with them and our feelings towards them. If there is abuse or neglect in our childhood histories, the impact may be upsetting for us and detrimental to our relationships with our children. I am particularly interested in helping parents who are experiencing this kind of difficulty.