Evaluation and treatment of Reactive-Situational Anxiety and/or Depression, Generalized Anxiety, Panic Attacks, Persistent Depression, Major Depression, Social Anxiety (with or without underlying Avoidant Personality or ASD), and Traumatic Bereavement (specializing in Complicated Grief after a Suicide Loss)

Consult-liaison with Psychiatry for the conditions above when medication is indicated, concurrent with psychotherapy

During your initial visit with me, I'll review information you  provided prior to your visit; in addition to any introductory email information you may have provided, a medical, social, symptom and treatment history questionnaire and administer and review any standardized psychological testing (e.g. anxiety or depression or other mood, stress, or trauma inventories or the MMPI-2-RF which I determine to be helpful for optimally assessing and treating the problems for which you're seeking help.

If we decide after that initial visit to proceed with psychotherapy, you can expect a doctor-patient  relationship which feels supportive and safe, free of judgment as we work to identify and modify your life circumstances or coping behaviors or habitual ways of thinking which are fueling your problems. My treatment approach is balanced between non-directive listening (facilitating emotional processing and insight) and action-oriented skills training and application (facilitating change).  My experience is that successful treatment outcomes require a commitment to both insight and action and that one without the other is ultimately ineffective.

My general treatment approach is informed by the psychotherapy principles and values of Carl Rogers' Person-Centered or Client-Centered Therapy  and Les Greenberg's Process-Experiential/ Emotion-Focused Therapy (PE-EFT). ​ I provide a supportive, empathic, and nonjudgmental therapeutic relationship. My goal is that you experience genuine empathy, deep-level understanding and acceptance; a level of trust and felt safety and validation which allows for emotional processing and reprocessing (accessing, tolerating, expressing, and transforming emotions) at a comfortable pace.
To further generate insight and a framework for change and action (establish with you an expanded awareness of your personal feelings and needs and the ways in which you process or experience who and what is important to you and the kinds of skills and strategies and goals necessary for you to meet your treatment goals),  I employ a variety of evidence-based psychotherapy protocols and methods including the best of CBT, ACT, and FAP; and for Traumatic Bereavement, Narrative Reconstruction Therapy.

Cognitive-Behavioral Help in identifying beliefs causing anxiety and other mood, stress coping, or behavioral issues is offered by David Burns MD who pioneered CBT, what he called  rational-emotive therapy with his 1980 book Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy  - common kinds of distorted/problematic thinking and suggested, healthier 'rational-emotive' alternatives outlined by Dr. Burns in the documents, downloadable below.

​Cognitive Distortions: Ten Forms of Twisted Thinking (David Burns MD)
cognitive_distortion_twisted_think.pdf
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Ten Ways to Untwist Your Thinking (David Burns MD)
ten_ways_to_untwist_your_thinking.pdf
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The Physiological Sigh (a way of breathing which quickly decreases heart rate and other fight-or-flight or sympathetic nervous system hyperarousal)
https://www.google.com/search?q=andrew+huberman+physiological+sigh&rlz=1C1LENN_enUS483US483&oq=andrew+huberman+physiological+sigh&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIGCAEQRRg90gEJMTAzODhqMGo3qAIAsAIA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:bc5dd8fe,vid:Sva2A9yXiM4,st:0
Mindfulness Meditation is a way of perceiving reality.  It is a radically passive awarenss of what's happening at any present moment and  'for the moment' at least not doing anything about it - simply noticing what's happening rather than trying to change or stop what's happening) - a passive or neutral awareness we can employ at will in any moments we choose so as to separate who we are in terms of our core values from what our minds spin out and 'would have us believe' about who we are; a natural or free-floating awareness we can embrace so as to simply notice whatever may cross our minds (e.g. stress-triggering or negative emotions or disturbing thoughts or images or memories) rather than helplessly participating in the 'mind clutter' and being hooked into the idea that we have to stop or change it.

Mindfulness Meditation (Natural Awareness) Audios (Diana Winston, Director of UCLA Mindfulness Education
https://dianawinston.com/meditations
Mindfulness Meditation (Natural Awareness) Scripts from Diana Winston's Little Book of Being: Practice and Guidance for Uncovering Your Natural Awareness
practices_and_guidance_for_uncovering_your_natural_awareness__diana_winston.pdf
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https://www.amazon.com/Little-Book-Being-Practices-Uncovering/dp/1683642171  The Little Book of Being: Practices and Guidance for Uncovering Your Natural Awareness by Diana Winston, Sounds True Publications
https://www.google.com/books/edition/ACT_Made_Simple/g9uTmri248kC?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover ​ ACT Made Simple: A Quick-Start Guide to ACT Basics and Beyond by Russ Harris, PhD, New Harbinger Publications, 2009 offers a straightforward summary of this treatment model's contribution to psychotherapy. According to ACT, we end up stuck feeling unhappy or stressed-overwhelmed trying to cope with life or solve personal problems, generally because of our habit of 1) dwelling on the past and the future, 2) over-attaching to self-concept (fusing or entangling ourselves with images or roles or stories about who we are or were or should be or believing and identifying with whatever ends up crossing our minds),  3) denying or avoiding negative emotion and the self-defeating and relationship-jeopardizing or socially disruptive things we do (e.g. anesthetizing ourselves with drugs or alcohol or otherwise blocking instead of processing; cutting-off emotionally from the problems or misdirection we need to correct), and so  4) doing what's not working for us, over and over again (keeping ourselves out of touch with what we need and want or lacking the motivation and/or skills to take the actions necessary to do the things that will make us most happy, i.e. do whatever it takes to 'live our values').  

​ACT briefly stated encourages being present via mindfulness so as to watch your thinking, accept what's not working for you, know what matters, and do what it takes to change.

ttps://www.google.com/books/edition/Functional_Analytic_Psychotherapy_Made_S/KpNrDgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover
​Functional Analytic Psychotherapy Made Simple: A Practical Guide to Therapeutic Relationships by Gareth Holman, Jonathan W. Kanter, Mavis Tsai, Robert Kohlenberg, & Steven C. Hayes, New Harbinger Publications, 2017 (Chapter 3 for the best summary of FAP's core principles and methods) is a good resource to help you understand what treatment with me includes in terms of the FAP treatment model, particularly its key goals and methods as outlined in Chapter 3. 

Functional analytic psychotherapy (FAP) is a form of behavior therapy which emphasizes use of the therapist–client relationship for providing powerful in vivo learning opportunities (Functional Analytic Psychotherapy v 841 Encyclopedia of Psychotherapy VOLUME 1Copyright 2002, Elsevier Science (USA). Robert J. Kohlenberg University of Washington Mavis Tsai Seattle, WA). It is a relational approach to psychotherapy which considers in-session client–therapist interactions to be critical information, useful for knowing what's not working and needs to be changed to improve everyday relationships.

As part of your psychotherapy with me, informed by FAP treatment guidelines, it is understood that the social interaction (relationship) behaviors which are keeping you 'stuck' in unhappy relationships or causing stress and strife for you in generally happy relationships are going to eventually show up when you interact with your psychotherapist.  And when they do show up, under my care you can expect open and honest discussion, collaboration towards sorting out what's happening and why: 'functional analysis', e.g. identifying ways in which problematic ways of operating with others may be grounded in societal or parental scripts or role modeling if not childhood-family trauma or loss; and no matter how you got to where you are with people, what is to be gained and lost if you let go and adopt new more adaptive ways of interacting:  In the short-term, what is it you'll need to face or accept? And what alternative behaviors would better serve you and your everyday relationships; and  why not commit to moving toward those behaviors, what gets in the way?

As part of your therapy relationship, under my care, you can expect me to encourage  whatever healthy alternative behaviors we’ve identified. And if you open up to healthy social interaction ‘reinforcement’ and practice during your psychotherapy visits, you'll find it generalizing to your everyday relationships.

As defined in Holman's Functional Analytic Psychotherapy Made Simple, Chapter 3 - Clinically relevant behaviors (CRBs) represent categories of change that occur as part of FAP. And there are three general categories:  CRB1s are the problematic behaviors that occur in-session and become the focus of change. CRB2s are the healthy alternative behaviors that are identified as effective, desirable replacements for the CRB1s, and CRB3s refer to statements or rules you internalize, i.e. self-talk/cues you come up with to help make the shift toward those CRB2s and to better adopt and maintain them as your 'go to' in relationships.  FAP processing is in this way in line with the cognitive restructuring (and in turn replacement of unhealthy behaviors with healthy alternatives) which is basic to cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).

​Integrated ACT-CBT-FAP Questions: Helpful for Psychotherapy Processing & Behavior Change
integrated_act-cbt-fap_questions.pdf
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