Services

Adult (18+ years and older) individual psychotherapy.    

 "Therapy" or "counseling" are not easily described, and vary depending on the personality of both the therapist and the client, and the particular types of problems being presented. However, a description of my thoughts on therapy and what you might expect may be helpful. I believe that people are oppressed by the problems that visit their lives, and that old stories which are no longer useful limit our ability to respond in new ways to the trouble in our lives. I help clients expose those old stories and make room in their lives for them to create new ways of being. To do this we may use techniques from many different theories of therapy. 

More important to me than any theory of therapy are hope, respect, confidence in the process of therapy, and a healthy therapeutic relationship. These ingredients give my clients a safe environment and the support they need to try new things. While I am willing to be the expert on the process of psychotherapy, I believe that you are the expert on your own life. That means that rather than telling you what to do to heal, I will help you re-discover your own strengths, and use them to effectively take a stand against the trouble that has come to your life. You will be responsible for deciding when and how, to change your life. My goal for therapy is to help you identify who you want to become, and to help you move toward this preferred self. 

The purpose of therapy is to change.  Most of us hate that.  Especially when it comes to changing ourselves.  However, when we are unhappy with life, or some part of it, it's often well  worth the effort to make a change.  My job is to help you define what you want to change, how you want to go about that, and to help you get through the process.

My clients come to work on a variety of life issues.  The first category contains "mental health diagnosis".  

Mental Health Issues:

Please keep in mind that in mental health work a "diagnosis" is simply a cluster of symptoms that often seem to clump together.  That means that it's much more important to determine what "depression", for example, means to you rather than making your symptoms match the book.  I have experience working with depression, anxiety, post traumatic stress disorder (trauma), and most of the other common diagnosis found in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders Five TR (DSM-5-TR).

Other Important Issues:

The DSM-5-TR is important, but it also only defines a very small slice of the kinds of issues that humans face in their life.  I also work with people on men's issues, as well as women's issues.  Stage of life or transition issues can be both very exciting and troublesome.  The same is true of career or employment struggles.  While I rarely work with couples or families many people discover that they need to work on themselves as they also work on relationships.  

The Catch All:

You don't have to be "Ill" or "sick" or "troubled" to use therapy as a tool to improve your life.  In fact I hardly ever see my clients that way.  Many people feel that they are in a bland routine that isn't rewarding or satisfying for them.  Being "stuck" in life is a perfectly good thing to address with therapy.  We often find that the reason they get stuck is because dreams, aspirations, and most of all the fun they want from life has been discouraged and/or very thinly described.