I embrace a variety of therapeutic principles and theories for individual therapy.
While there may be some consistency regarding how people experience various life situations, and challenges there is also a great variety within that gulf regarding what each individual experiences as encouraging and helpful. My goal is to look at the challenges you are experiencing through your eyes, and to empathetically understand how your experiences in life have contributed to where you find yourself today.
Below is a list of clinical theories that I borrow from.
Psychodynamic theories
Psychodynamic theories may be employed to help you examine ways in which your thoughts and feelings stem from your family of origin. This approach helps you look at how conflicts between yourself and your parents were worked out and enables you to better understand how some of your defenses were developed. Some defensive mechanisms, at one time, may have been functional. As time and circumstances change, you may experience that some familiar types of coping have become maladaptive. In this case, we will work together to help you set aside some coping styles that have helped you endure problems but have not allowed you to rise above and beyond the challenges you are wrestling with.
In a collaborative effort, I will help you develop and refine new tools for improved stress management and self-care. This approach also assists you with establishing greater insight into how your personality developed, what motivates behaviors, and the reasons you experience certain types of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) helps you identify and change patterns of negative thinking. With this approach, you will become more attuned to what your patterns of thinking tend to be. You will develop skills for how to replace negative thoughts with those that are more balanced, positive, and reality-based. As you learn to develop more rational and realistic thoughts, more positive actions and healthier habits will follow.
In experiencing these changes, you will foster a healthier, more accepting relationship with yourself. This approach enables you to change how you feel about yourself, your experiences, and how you see yourself in relation to others.
Motivational Interviewing
Motivational Interviewing Skills may be utilized to help you explore how you feel about change. Together, we have a therapeutic conversation that helps you ponder what your values are and what goals you have. We will work through ambivalence towards change. This modality helps you plan and implement a course of action to help you create and maintain the outcomes you desire.
Attachment Based Theories
Attachment based theories (also psychodynamic in origin) are based on helping you recognize the quality of bonds you share with people,
especially as they stem from your parents and original caregivers. These types of bonds may now be reflected in your long term, romantic partnerships. If you developed secure attachments in your childhood, it follows that you may have healthy, secure attachments with significant others now.
However, if primary caregivers did not respond appropriately to your basic physical, social, and emotional needs in childhood, you may be at risk for developing relationships in adulthood that are less than 100% satisfying. These theories help you look at your patterns of bonding to determine what skills you might still need to develop and/or fine-tune to help you cultivate the most successful relationships with others.
We may also look at the types of people you tend to gravitate towards and whether or not these people possess the sorts of personality traits that will benefit you and your relationships with them. When you consider your expectations with significant others, chances are they are based on how you were treated (and what you came to expect) in childhood. One of the goals in applying this model is to help you reclaim your choice as to who you choose to surround yourself with.
Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT)
Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) has been created to help people create change when they are struggling with patterns of behavior that are self-defeating and/or self-harming. I may use this modality when you are recovering from addiction, coping with the aftermath of infidelity, struggling with anger management, and/or seeking a break from the chaos around you. DBT can help when you are having challenges with self-care, are uncertain how to self-soothe when stress peaks, are uneasy about being assertive, and have challenges staying in the present without being consumed by past experiences and/or worries about the future.
DBT offers a key to learning how to promote self-acceptance, interpersonal effectiveness, and self-regulation. If you are looking for a way to be less judgmental, at peace, in control, and in the present, this therapeutic approach may work well for you.
Solution Focused Brief Therapy
Solution Focused Brief Therapy promotes personal change quite differently from psychodynamic approaches that seek to understand your personal history and causes for problems. This model helps you envision what your goals are, what would be different in your life if these goals were achieved, and how well things could go for you if your challenges vanished or are coped with better. This approach helps you identify positive changes for your life and assists with helping you carry forward your vision and related action steps for a more desirable future.