How I Work
I prefer to view people as dealing with life and developmental struggles, and not to view personal problems as medical problems. I find medical diagnoses unhelpful. Each person’s behavior originally had a purpose in our family of origin. Our early experience leaves us with coping strategies and emotional reactions now hard-wired in our brains.
This core of our personality can be functional in our work lives, but almost always backfires in our personal relationships, especially intimate ones. People can be strategic or managerial in their work lives, but those skills are rarely appreciated at home. As people become aware of their emotional process, they can more clearly see how they behave in their current world. It allows for problem solving in our daily lives less driven by old emotional reactions. Unfortunately, seeing our own emotional structure is challenging. We don’t see our own “stuff” because we live inside of it, much like we don’t smell perfume a minute after it is applied.
Most commonly partners bring the hurt from their childhood to their love partners. If they were angry for being rejected in their childhood, they will have the same feelings in their current relationship. This is a law of nature that we bring our love and pain to our current love partners.
The therapeutic process in my office is not a search for pathology, but a chance to express feelings, be heard, heal, and solve real problems. In couples work the process is synergistic; partners can be incredibly helpful healing agents of one another.
Our work together fosters healthy methods of solving problems and working out emotional reactions; the process is based in science and sound outcome research. The foundation of my work lies in the attachment literature of John Bowlby and in modern neuroscience. My work is active and engaging of your resources, not pedantic or passively analytic. We work as a team to understand the nature of the problem and to build a plan to change.
In my clinical practice I work with:
• Individuals
• Couples
