My Approach to Psychotherapy

I approach each client as a unique individual with their own needs, issues and strengths. My goal is to use psychotherapy to help each client accomplish the changes they want make and achieve the goals they set for themselves. My approach in sessions is humanistic and caring, curious and challenging, supportive and understanding. I use a lifetime of experiences as well as psychological training to help my clients succeed.

For long-lasting change, I have found that the therapeutic relationship is an important part of this process. In the therapeutic relationship, which can be part “doctor”, “parent”, “consultant”, “coach” and part “friend” [all of these roles remain within the therapeutic session], clients learn that they can feel safe and trust their therapist with the issues that frighten or upset them. They begin to look at themselves more openly and learn about what holds them back and what they can do to change their thoughts and beliefs to achieve the goals they seek.

The therapist’s role is to support change that is long-lasting. Within a few sessions, clients begin to see that the beliefs and behaviors that they have relied on may no longer be helpful or necessary, and that they can learn new, more positive beliefs about themselves. They can challenge past thoughts and behaviors and create new ones to achieve their goals.

In many cases, a client’s sense of themself can be frightened, negative, stressed, anxious or depressed because of traumatic life experiences, including illness, abuse (emotional, physical or sexual) the loss of a parent or divorce, or rigid and difficult parenting. These experiences can have a long-lasting effect on how they see themselves and live out their lives, often limiting the quality of their lives.

For each client, I use techniques and interventions from Psychodynamic theory, Cognitive Behavioral Theory (CBT), Humanistic psychology, Behavioral psychology, Transpersonal and Interpersonal theory, and tailor them to the client’s needs. I bring a caring, empathetic, professional and personalized approach without blame, shame or guilt, to the issues that clients bring into the session.

Clients learn how to use effective confrontation techniques and improve communication skills to help clients deal with challenging people. They learn to set healthy boundaries with difficult people, often family members. And they learn that they are worthwhile, challenging the negative views that they have held from childhood that present as depression or anxiety.

They learn to strengthen their positive sense of themselves, learn to appreciate who they are and value themselves for what they do.  And they learn that they can and do change the way they think and act and are excited by the experience of becoming the person they have always wanted to be.