Practice Areas
Do any of the following strike a chord in you? If yes, please remember you can get help.
- Do you feel overwhelmed and completely stressed by all the things you have to do?
- Does your family and work life feel out of balance?
- Would you like to take your married or intimate relationships to the next level?
- Is parenting your baby or young child harder than you ever expected?
- Do your cultural values and expectations clash with those around you?
People face many difficulties when they are challenged by the stresses of balancing life, family, and other relationships. If you are experiencing any of these, therapy can be a valuable investment in sorting through your values and priorities and then moving onto a more whole fulfilled life.
Individual Therapy
Individual therapy can help a person get stronger emotionally, get more centered, and more healthy. I help you to get there by strengthening your understanding of yourself with respect to your family and community, and get to the root of conflicts in your life that hold you back from living more fully. I help you to expand your emotional capacity and think more fully about all things. You will also learn to manage intense feelings more comfortably as we talk about your everyday life.
Working collaboratively to understand underlying grief that may be unprocessed is another way to move forward in your life.
If you are reading this, chances are you are considering therapy. It takes courage to make that first call and it is normal to be a little anxious about it. Even if you are in a relationship and considering therapy for yourself, the work we do together will spread out to help you in all areas of your life. You can learn to take on responsibility for the complexity of your emotional life and stop projecting your feelings on your partner or friends. I help you to locate and understand your own truth and wisdom from the unique relationship we build together.
Couples Therapy
I enjoy couples therapy and help couples get to the underlying areas of stress and misunderstanding in their lives. Many couples get a lot of resolution of their difficulties when they are able to work with me consistently, investing some time as they learn to look into and under their difficulties. Some couples only come in when they have got to a crisis point where one of them is severely depressed (most often the depression in the heterosexual couple is diagnosed in the woman who may be carrying the symptom more obviously) or they need to make decisions about whether to medicate or not. The depression often exists in the couple with the male manifesting anger and irritation and the female showing more classical symptoms of depression such as crying and an inability to function.
My work with couples helps them to look at their separate histories, experiences and expectations of each other. Symptoms can lift and change with more hope for thinking together as a family when you learn to listen to each other. Women may finally be able to talk about anger and the men about vulnerability and fears. Couples who deal with an infidelity can learn to look under and beyond the acting out of their frustrations, and re-commit to one another and the children. When there has been childhood trauma, treatment sometimes takes longer but understanding the source and nature of the trauma is essential to making changes.
When I work with couples with disagreements about parenting styles, I help them review and understand the parenting they received as a way to start making better choices in how to be more effective with their children, as well as find more efficient and nurturing ways to take care of their children’s needs.
Changes that occur as a result of therapy can be subtle unless a crisis is being addressed, but small changes can lead to completely different ways of thinking. This can positively impact more than just the client(s) so that entire family system can shift radically.
Consulting for a few sessions will give you a taste for how therapy can work in your life. Coming into my office to work with me is like coming into a comfortable family room where anything can be discussed – it is a warm and comforting space, not a clinical encounter. It can become the sacred psychological space from which you can grow.
New Moms and Dads
Adding a new member to the family can be the start of a very exciting and satisfying phase of your life. It can also be a very stressful time.
As a new parent, are you…
- Overwhelmed or isolated?
- Confused by conflicting information?
- Facing conflicts with your spouse and family over parenting styles?
- Wondering about your parenting principles?
- Questioning the parenting you got?
- Considering doing things a little differently?
Parenting in our times can be stressful and too often, the first child pays the price of parental inexperience and anxiety.
Getting help can make this transition smoother. Insight oriented psychotherapy can help you explore and clarify any underlying issues, enrich your relationships and help make parenting a more rewarding experience.
Remember, you don’t have to do this alone.
Pregnancy, Postpartum, and Depression
This is a delicate and sensitive time in any woman’s life when there is a huge shift in identity.
Even if the pregnancy was planned and eagerly awaited, it sets off massive changes in your life that can overcome your sense of ability and confidence. It is important to be assessed for safety of the baby and you, and if the blues don’t lift by two weeks after delivery and move towards a new equilibrium, it is imperative to get help. If you have any thoughts of harming yourself or the baby, please call 911 immediately.
Recently, there has been widely discussed news about routinely screening pregnant women for depression. That is an important step. Pregnancy can re-open old wounds and memories for both the parents, not just the woman. Parenting an infant is challenging but should also be a rewarding time. If you are dealing with Depression, everything can seem much harder and it is difficult to find joy in the baby or yourself. This impacts the whole family.
It may be important to screen the non-pregnant spouse for Depression too. The kind of support you have can set the tone for your health over the next few years. Postpartum depression is sometimes a collapse of a new mother into a fearful and sad mindset when the actual problems may be unvoiced. Post Partum Depression is serious but treatable.
If you are crying a lot, feeling extremely sad or hopeless, overwhelmed with feelings of guilt or hopelessness, feeling empty or irritable, avoiding people, uninterested in your baby, worrying excessively about your baby, restless, or unable to get out of bed, please understand that these are symptoms of PPD. If five or more of the symptoms have lasted over a couple of weeks, it is important to get help. Please call to set up an appointment with me. Babies in car seats can accompany you to my office although you may be able to speak more freely if you can have someone care for the baby while you come in.
Careers in Technology
Careers in the world of Technology are fast-paced and if a person feels left behind, it can cause a lot of distress. Silicon Valley’s world of Technology moves rapidly and success in careers here is different than in more traditional fields. It tends to be a highly male-dominated world. I help male and female clients build awareness, learn to be more assertive, be sensitive to their body language and communicate more clearly and effectively so that they can promote their careers diplomatically yet self-assuredly.
Some women can be overwhelmed by passive yet aggressive colleagues – both men and women – and not know how to push back and still be successful. When women feel aggression from other women it can feel surprisingly shocking and difficult. I use a model of coaching with counseling to identify areas of difficulty and work on these to build up a more resourceful, assured, and confidant path to career success.