Clinicians who offer sliding scale payment structures may offer lower or reduced fees based on an individual's ability to pay. Please contact this clinician for more details regarding their fees or sliding scale policy.What's My Approach to Therapy?
You may be interested in therapy for a specific issue, or the reason might be harder to pinpoint. Maybe you feel sad, anxious, or numb, but aren’t sure why. Maybe you struggle in relationships. Maybe you feel stuck. Therapy can help you to get unstuck and rework what is no longer serving you.
Depression, anxiety and other emotional conditions are what Jonathan Shedler calls "psychological equivalents of fever" - symptoms of underlying issues that vary depending on the history and makeup of each individual. People are shaped by relationships and experiences from early on in life. Initially our adaptations are helpful or necessary, but over time we continue to play out and reinforce familiar patterns without realizing it. This can become rigid and self-defeating, or even create new problems (e.g., using substances to cope).
New skills can be useful, but they don't get at the root of the issue. This is why I primarily use an insight-oriented approach, to facilitate deeper, more lasting change.
I offer you a safe space where you can speak openly, and we can develop a shared understanding of your unique challenges. I won’t talk too much about myself, but we may use our relationship to understand how you tend to engage.
Good therapy involves a joint focus on past and present. The goal isn’t to get mired in the past, it’s to understand how the road you’ve traveled brought you to this point, so you can move forward with more options and ease, rather than being controlled by old, entrenched patterns.
