My practice provides psychotherapy services to adult individuals and couples.
I welcome and see people of diverse backgrounds and treat a range of issues and difficulties.
Typical Areas of Practice:
- depression, anxiety and worry
- loss, grief
- trauma – neglect, physical, sexual, mental abuse, #metoo
- self-defeating behaviors
- self-esteem issues
- identity, meaning, purpose
- life transitions and adjustments
- career stress and work/life balance
More on services and specialties I am particularly interested in
and regularly provide
For Executives and High Achievers
I often receive calls from high-performing women and men, including CEOs and other executives who despite a considerable career success, have found themselves overwhelmed by anxiety, depression, loneliness, or a sense of falseness and meaninglessness.
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Frequently they engage in self-defeating behaviors risking their health and relationships or their ability to expand their creativity and professional horizons.
I find inner work to be extremely useful for members of this group. In partnership, we create a safe space for learning about core influences, assumptions, and meanings attached to their success, particularly factors influencing their current situation and symptoms.
In this process, they often exhibit deep sensitivity and insecurity, intrusive self-criticism, and weighty shame and guilt surrounding their success. Here, they are able to slow down, allow themselves to meander in mind, and experience the freedom to express doubt or ask questions that cannot be readily answered.
And experientially, the introspective qualities and “off-track” explorations of dynamic work provide these individuals the opportunity to approach and meet goals in ways that are distinctly in contrast to the linear, hierarchical, and pressured-paced professional climb, and often more congruent with their reality and heart’s true voice.
I’ve been effective in helping my high-achieving clients make sense of their present and past events, cultivate emotional flexibility, develop more honest connections with themselves and others, enhance healthy lifestyle, and frequently energize and expand their professional horizons.
For Artists and Creative Individuals
It is a wonderful thing to express yourself artistically – to make use of your imagination, intuition, talents, and to immerse in the creative process. It can be an extraordinary and fulfilling experience.
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Humanity has always depended on art to express deep truths and values, cultural identity, and to bring beauty, joy, and opportunities for celebrations. If art is your calling, your journey can be thrilling and life affirming, but also complex and intertwined with internal pain and struggle.
You connect deeply to your art and crave its organic emergence and flow, yet when you are stuck in a creative block you can’t seem to get anywhere.
Frequently, trauma, anxiety, and unrecognized repressed emotions are the root causes of obstacles that disconnect you from your creative voice and from all that is necessary for your continued expression and success.
The approach I use as a psychoanalytic therapist has many parallels to the creative path of the artist and can meaningfully help you in moving through and beyond obstacles toward greater confidence and creative freedom for your artistic vision and its expression to thrive.
Some areas we may work on together include elevating self-value and your creative voice; managing responses to rejection, criticism and perfectionism; creating balance between art and life and improving connections with others.
For Trauma
Life does not shield us from our fragile existence! Birth, aging, illness, death are, in fact, major events that can change us dramatically.
Experiencing physical, sexual, or psychological abuse can be devastating to our development, self-esteem, and how we function in the world.
Global calamities of war, terror, immigration, or natural disasters often turn our lives upside down, leaving us disillusioned and evermore vulnerable.
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And even if life feels generally good and safe, there may be this constant and illusive angst about living – restricting your innate vitality and thirst for adventure and exploration.
Are you carrying a story of trauma, one that has hindered your capacity to thrive – to connect meaningfully with yourself and others, to feel confident, vital, and hopeful? Has it replaced your best self with prolonged anxiety, depression, isolation, substance abuse, or feelings of shame and guilt surrounding such distressing events?
My practice offers a safe setting to help you cultivate paths to ease the weight and reduce the ‘noise’ of your traumatizing experiences. Working together, I will help you develop skills and practices to manage your pain while also engaging you to process, acknowledge, and come to terms with your story of trauma, so you can participate more fully and authentically in your life.
- If we determine that you require a level of care beyond what I can provide, I will attempt to refer you to other providers who might be more suited for your trauma therapy needs.
For Change, Transitions, Adjustments
It is true – a major change, even when welcomed and necessary, can be stressful and overwhelming. For some, it’s a painful reminder of earlier, more difficult and even traumatizing experiences of transition. Often change comes with great loss and unfamiliar new terrains, and, if not managed well, individuals in times of transition can find themselves extremely vulnerable, fragile, and at wits’ end.
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Are you approaching or moving through change? Are you finding it hard to transition and adjust to what’s in front of you?
Is your change about marriage, birth, divorce, career? Are you moving onto the next season of your life? Are your children all grown and leaving home?
Perhaps paying your final goodbyes to a land, a community, or others you hold near and dear?
If the change occurring in your life proves difficult and leads to anxiety, depression, confusion, and other difficulties – therapy can be significantly useful.
Working together, I will support you in your situation in ways that can leave you stronger, more confident, and better prepared for what comes next in life.
In fact, I can help you recognize and seize the opportunity inherent in change, so you grow and even thrive moving through and beyond these challenging times.
Typical life transitions I treat in my practice
- stages of life
- marriage, birth, separation, and divorce
- grief, loss, and bereavement
- relocation, immigration, acculturation
- career changes
- LGBTQ
Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy
Psychoanalytic psychotherapy is a form of talk therapy that is based on the idea that how people behave, believe, or feel is often influenced by psychological factors rooted in their past and of which they are frequently unaware. If you experience emotional pain or perhaps feeling stuck and confused – learning about the inner workings of your mind can be tremendously helpful in alleviating internal suffering and empowering you in moving forward.
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With advanced training in psychoanalytic psychotherapy I use this approach to engage my clients in a special dialogue helpful in shining light on root-causes of hindering matters and difficulties so that these become evident and therefore available for change and transformation.
To stimulate awareness, I encourage my clients to talk freely about whatever is on their mind. Stories, fantasies, and dreams offer rich material for exploration and discovery.
Doing this work with curiosity, patience, and perseverance – you too can grow to discover inner peace, connect more authentically with yourself and others, and create tangible and purposeful change in your life. This process is held and energized by the meaningful space and the relationship my clients and I develop over time.
Online Consultation
Online therapy is the delivery of psychotherapy services through a secure live video or audio connection over the Internet.
These sessions are offered to residents of California allowing accessibility and convenience when it is difficult to meet in-person in my office. In some situations, remote therapy may be the only way to work regularly and to keep your psychotherapy treatment vital and moving forward.
Tele-therapy has limitations and isn’t suited for everyone, but if interested – feel free to contact me to discuss your situation and particular needs.
Licensed in California, I can provide psychotherapy services only to California residents, and as life coach to individuals anywhere around the world.