My Specialties and Approach to Psychotherapy

PSYCHOTHERAPY - PERSONAL GROWTH - RELATIONSHIPS

Adjustment, Resilience, and Restoration

My Specialties

RELATIONSHIPS — PERSONAL GROWTH—DIVORCE & BREAKUPS—LIFE TRANSITIONS—FINDING PURPOSE—FAMILY & PARENTING—PARENTING COORDINATION—CUSTODY EVALUATIONS—CAREER —ANXIETY— DEPRESSION—TRAUMA RECOVERY—NARCISSISTIC ABUSE—CONFLICT MANAGEMENT—GRIEF AND LOSS—POSTPARTUM—CHRONIC MEDICAL CONDITIONS—STRESS MANAGEMENT—GERIATRIC—CHILDREN OF AGING PARENTS

Why Psychotherapy?

Most symptoms or conflicts occur because you may be confused or deny your needs, feelings, and perceptions. Psychotherapy is education about you. Together we develop your self-awareness, how to trust your intuition, and facilitate your ability to be mindful and reflective in your everyday behavior and your relationships. Neuroscience confirms you cannot control how you feel, yet you can understand why you have specific feelings and learn how to trust them; that is my role. This leads to a realistic view of the consequences of your actions and better adjustment.

My Approach to Psychotherapy

An awareness of your history, biology, and emotions and how they came together to create who you are is the goal of psychotherapy. We work toward having a more fulfilling life, work, and love.

My Specialty

I specialize in developing resilience and adjusting to life's difficulties; this involves knowing when you can express strong emotions and when you need to suppress them in order to function. Resilience involves flexibility and patience balanced with the appropriate action. Resilience includes periods of great emotional pain and physical stress derived from any significant trauma or tragedy. It can also be due to positive life events, such as marriage, a new baby, the clarity of your sexual orientation, or moving to a new culture/country. Any change in your life can affect you with feelings of fear, vulnerability, and weakness. However, by opening our perspectives, altering our thinking, and working through the emotions and effects of the events in our lives, we can develop our resilience and learn how to flourish once again.

Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis is a more intense type of therapy. It aims to examine an individual's unconscious and expose real feelings, emotions, and thoughts that lead to exploring and understanding the individual's personality structure. Psychoanalysis is best for individuals who are looking to make profound character changes. For it to be a successful treatment, a high degree of trust, autonomy, and sense of identity is needed. The goals of treatment include the removal of unconscious obstacles to full gratification in the areas of love, work, and play. It is a search for painful truths about the self. Thus, one's self-esteem must already be resilient enough to tolerate some unpleasant discoveries. The individual seeking psychoanalysis must have an established working alliance with the clinician so they can uncover unconscious defenses, feelings, fantasies, beliefs, conflicts, and strivings. Psychoanalysis is for individuals who are looking to have a thorough understanding of their personality with the goal of the most significant possible degree of Growth and change. Three to four sessions per week commitment is required.

Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy

Psychoanalytic psychotherapy draws from the practice and theories of analytical psychology. It has offered considerable help to most individuals. It is often problem-focused and active in discovering unhealthy themes and patterns of behavior. It is a therapeutic process that helps to understand and resolve problems by increasing awareness of an individual's inner world and its influence on relationships, both past, and present. Psychotherapy is supportive and invites the individual to explore his or her perceptions, thoughts, and feelings. It is less of a commitment of time (one-two sessions per week), money, and emotional energy as compared to psychoanalysis.