Psychotherapy
Honestly facing what troubles you can be challenging. I will help you identify the sources of your suffering making it possible to overcome that suffering. Choosing psychotherapy creates an intimate opportunity to explore and expand your emotional awareness.
The meaning we feel in our lives is deeply connected with our emotions, relationships, and experiences. With sincere determination and encouragement, you can expand your ability to communicate, develop your capacity for introspection, deepen your emotional understanding, and increase your self confidence.
Psychotherapy involves meeting once or twice a week for an extended period of time. Regular contact allows a healing conversation to evolve. The new awareness gained in psychotherapy leads to a greater range of choices in your life. Psychotherapy is an investment in reclaiming your future.
Psychoanalysis
As your analyst my job is to create a safe space where you can check out the state of your own mind by expressing whatever thoughts, feelings, concerns, hopes, or desires spontaneously arise during the session.
Many unexamined patterns of daily living function as unconscious solutions to old wounds. In psychoanalysis, we can investigate the unconscious motivations that influence how you perceive yourself, others, and the world.
Doing psychoanalysis you will discover your own words for anxieties, wishes, dreams, memories, secrets, emotions and fantasies that before may have been wordless. Over time, this process promotes the capacity to be present to yourself and others in radically new ways.
Time is needed to explore experience deeply. Choosing psychoanalysis involves meeting two, three, or four times a week, usually over a period measured in years. Some patients lay on a couch, others sit up in a chair. The special atmosphere created by the analytic method makes a deep form of emotional learning possible. Exploring the realm of experience that psychoanalysts call "your inner world" gradually helps you to free yourself from life long blind spots and diminish obstacles to realizing your own personal creativity.
Child Therapy
There are times in every family's life when it is difficult for parents to comprehend their child's intentions. Negative emotions and behaviors can be unrecognized forms of communication. Problem behaviors can often be transformed by learning about how the child's emotions and motivations influence conduct. Skilled early intervention helps children create the tools they need for success in the future.
I am strongly committed to helping children and their families. Research shows that children with emotional skills do better in school, are more confident with peers, and are less likely to get into serious trouble. (Read more)
In child therapy, your child will have the chance to discover his or her unconscious concerns through a variety of play activities. Current research shows that play is a powerful element in promoting development. (Read more)
I pay careful attention to the child's play communications, helping to create a safe space where he or she can experiment with expressing troubling feelings. Over time, intense emotions become more ordinary and manageable. Your child will develop significant confidence as his or her capacity for reflection and emotional awareness increases.
I provide psychotherapy and psychoanalysis to children and adolescents between the ages of 4 and 18. An important part of my work is also the parenting support I provide while children are in treatment.
Autistic Spectrum Issues
Autism is a complex and intimidating condition that parents need skilled help to understand and respond to. I have special training and over a decade of experience focused on helping children with autistic spectrum issues and their families.
According to the Autism Research Center:
Autism is... a spectrum of neurodevelopmental conditions characterized by difficulties in the development of social relationships and communication skills and the presence of unusually strong narrow interests and repetitive behavior. Classic autism typically involves associated learning difficulties and language delay. Asperger Syndrome, a subgroup conceptualized as part of the autistic spectrum, shares the features of autism but without the associated learning impairments and language delays.
Many treatments for autism ignore the complexity of each child's unique developing personality. Failing to appreciate this dimension of experience radically limits the capacity for creating rich emotional communication and relationships. I focus on learning about the child's unique "picture of the world" and in helping him or her to share that picture and expand it over time.
With an interdisciplinary commitment to research and intervention I provide child therapy tailored to the special challenges faced by each child. I actively collaborate with parents and other providers to help the child achieve his or her fullest potential.
I'm influenced by the model of The Tavistock Autism Workshop in London, England and by Dr. Stanley Greenspan's DIR and Floortime models. These are two of the most humane and sophisticated models available for addressing autistic spectrum issues.
Recognition of my work with autistic spectrum issues has come as the winner of the Tenth Francis Tustin International Memorial Lecture in 2006. I am also a founding member of INSPIRA, the International Symposium for Psychoanalytic Intervention and Research into Autistic States.
In addition to my work I encourage you to look into the following resources: Autism Speaks, UW Autism Center, Wally's Club, Rosemary White, The Handle Institute, and National Institute of Mental Health.
Consultation
Part of becoming an effective psychotherapist involves establishing a method for self reflective inquiry. Consultation is a process that allows for "a second look" at one's own clinical work with the supportive attention of another's mind and experience.
Some people seek consultation for help with challenging cases. Another motivation involves seeking a mentoring experience with someone who shares their own ways of making meaning by openly exploring and discussing clinical material in a creative and supportive dialogue.
I view consultation as a collaborative process. I try to foster an atmosphere where the therapist can honestly share his or her work.
I am sincerely interested in learning how the therapist works and helping him or her define and expand existing skills in order to become more confident and effective. I emphasize deepening the capacity to trust both observation and intuition in the analytic process.
I freely share my reflections using the therapist's clinical material as a starting place for discussion and dialogue. All decisions on the conduct of the case remain the responsibility of the therapist.
I provide consultation on both child and adult cases at my office in Fremont and internationally via Skype. I currently consult with individuals and groups in Florida, Montana, California, and Australia, including Gunawirra, Ltd. I also frequently lecture, offer seminars, and meet with formal and informal training groups. To explore the possibilities of arranging a meeting with your group please contact me.