What's My Approach to Therapy?
I strongly believe that people are not defined by a diagnosis or demographic. The actual special process of therapy is not solely determined by your diagnosis, demographic category, or immediate circumstances in a paint-by-numbers approach.
The therapist and client have a shared purpose of participating in a structured conversation that will clarify core beliefs, identify unresolved conflicts, and establish realistic options and goals—short term and long.
I have extensive experience helping clients work through family of origin issues, depression, anxiety, and stress due to professional and personal life challenges. I enjoy combining insight-oriented psychotherapy with the structured, goal-setting aspect of behavioral counseling. When beneficial, I encourage a team approach and make available referrals to general practitioners, nutritionists, psychiatrists, or other professionals. I understand that many of my clients are working full time and beyond, and some are pursuing additional vocational and creative goals while striving to maintain family commitments.
My style is supportive and direct, with the goal in mind of working with you for the shared target of you facing life feeling better prepared, better informed, and more secure than when we first spoke. Because my style makes work in sessions collaborative, many of my clients bring notebooks to session and do outside homework.
I look forward to speaking with you.
My Practice & Services
Assembly Line Approach
Every therapist has a personalized style that they blend with their clinical orientation. I call my style the assembly line approach. This is my way of mapping out the beginning therapy process of intake—assessment (all the questions to be asked and answered from the start), the ongoing work (with momentum) in therapy, and the revisiting of these sections (which I think of as stations).
Knowing about these stations, and how therapy is often structured, may be helpful. You may decide to print the stations and make some notes.
Here they are:
Stations:
Station One
Immediate problem and current circumstances—what motivated you to schedule?
Station Two
Assets—social support, sources of happiness, resources, the specific goals, hopes, and dreams that prevent you from giving up.
Station Three
Liabilities—any source of pain, frustration, abuse, barriers, or preventions of living life fully. Barriers include relationships, patterns, physical limitations, finance, and addictions.
Station Four
Recent history—this oxymoron-sounding phrase expands on station one. This includes what has been going on lately within relationships, physical health, finance, memories, changes in those around you or in your environment, patterns, or changes to routines.
Station Five
History—childhood and onward—as much as you feel comfortable discussing.
Station Six
Goals in therapy, goals in life. What would you like to accomplish?
The Duration and Frequency of Therapy
Within a structured session, it is possible to address barriers and develop a realistic plan for creating desired changes. Individual sessions are weekly. Meeting twice a week can be done during times of a greater need for support. Meeting every other week or monthly sessions are also options when less support is appropriate. At the initial session and ongoing throughout therapy, it is important to determine how understood you feel. On the one hand, it impossible to get help with something without the needed disclosure, however, not everything has to or even can be covered in one initial meeting. The key is to take risks with disclosure, but still be aware of how you are feeling, and gauging what you share accordingly.
