The heart of psychotherapy is connection.
The process of looking for a therapist can be confusing and intimidating—even frightening. At a moment of great vulnerability you are reaching out to a stranger for help, someone to whom you are expected to reveal your most difficult thoughts and emotions. How do you know if you are choosing the right person? And what kind of therapist should you look for anyway? The field is a tangle of acronyms and theories: CBT, DBT, ACT, psychodynamic, trauma-focused, existential, and on and on.
I believe that each course of therapy should be tailor-made.
I integrate a number of therapeutic approaches into my practice, but I don’t subscribe dogmatically to any single one. I believe that each course of therapy should be tailor-made, taking into account each person’s unique needs, experiences, strengths, and current circumstances. And I firmly believe in collaboration. You are the expert on your own life, and it is vital that we work together to formulate goals, assess progress, and find the right path forward for you—a path that helps you to feel freer, more confident, and more able to face life’s challenges.
The heart of this work is connection.
Study after study show what commonsense suggests: therapy is most effective when you feel most comfortable and open within your therapist. The fundamental work takes place at the level of a relationship between two people. It is my job to foster that relationship with empathy and sincerity, so that you are able to come to therapy feeling truly, wholly, and complexly yourself.
My process.
The process starts with a phone call—a 20-minute conversation, free-of-charge, so that I can get an idea of the kind of help you are looking for, and you can get a sense of whether I might be a good fit. After that, I typically spend two or three sessions listening carefully, gathering more information about what brings you to therapy, including a sense of your childhood, background, beliefs, family life, aspirations, and important relationships. Together we will develop a clearer idea of what the problem is, what is causing it, and how to move forward.
Sessions usually take place once a week for forty-five to fifty minutes.