Individual Psychotherapy
I base my work with individuals in the relationship we co-create, one in which together we articulate and sort out the concerns about your life and relationships. While it’s not a fully balanced relationship (one is, after all, minding the store, so to speak), it is nevertheless a mutual, and collaborative relationship which holds meaning, growth and within which I help individuals verbalize and make known their intentions, hopes, and plans for change to a concerned witness.
Couples Counseling
I work with both gay and straight couples and help individuals to recognize what their interactions mean to each other individually, i.e., separate and regardless of the other, and then as a couple. Combining this with communication skills, couples can learn to understand and, at times, re-recognize the other as an individual so as to not personalize, or misinterpret each other’s underlying intentions and move beyond habitual patterns and reactions and approach each other in newer, more productive ways. In sessions with couples, I work both with the content and the process. This means problem solving with the couple, as well as getting them to slow down and examine their exchanges for what they are saying, how it is being received and how it may be leading them astray from their intended message, and effecting how they feel about each other.
Adolescents
In my work with adolescents, my focus is on helping young people recognize and integrate healthy self esteem, especially in relationships with peers, friends, and as they consider dating and more significant relationships. I feel that all relationships, especially dating, require learned social skills, a strong sense of one’s self and a capacity to make good choices. I also try where it is appropriate to include parents in the work with their children, i.e., offering my observations to collaborate with parents.
While, much of my role with adolescents is to be their advocate. I also work with parents individually around parenting issues, as well as meeting with, and facilitating meaningful dialogues between parents and adolescents.
Men’s Issues
In my practice, I am interested in the complexities of male depression and the difficulties men have with risking intimacy and forming meaningful relationships. As a man, I understand the challenges faced by men, and the difficulty finding a suitable place and individual to explore these challenges. Men often suffer from depression that negatively effects confidence and the ability to succeed. While it’s useful to explore how we feel, men need to be asked what they will do, how they will do it, and some useful suggestions to go about doing it. As men we want solutions with career, relationships, family, children and individual identity. Men have a lot riding on these things and often times feel they can’t let this show with the people in their lives—certainly not before they have a handle on it.
Interesting to note, since I’ve put out there working with “Men’s Issues,” I have begun seeing more women and couples in my practice. The reason for this is I think women want a male perspective in understanding their relationships with men. In couples men like to feel heard and understood and supported by another man and their female partners, I believe, recognize the benefit of this balance and want their partners to feel safe and heard, and more willing to participate.
Other Areas of Experience:
- Relationships and Dating
- Couples Communication and Relationship Development
- Life transitions
- Addiction
- Defining Identity and Self
- Over-coming Isolation
- Divorce; re-building identities and social contexts as single individuals, and dating.
Clinical supervision
My approach to supervising Marriage and Family Therapist Interns is collegial, supportive, and collaborative. I encourage Interns to develop themselves and their own sensibilities in the on-going learning and practice of psychotherapy, especially to question and examine the particular givens of therapy in order to take ownership of their place and understanding within the field. I stress the importance for interns to network and consider marketing approaches and strategies, so that they feel they have some footing stepping out into practice for themselves.
