kidsbrain.info: What is Assessment?

While my other presentations are more of a lecture format, Managing the Fallout is a workshop-type program in which parents will learn and practice take-home skills through small group interaction and role-playing. Included will be stress management skills for parents as well as skills for reducing tensions with your kids and creating the ongoing positive emotional experiences for them that are the building blocks of self-esteem. Please allow an hour-and-a-half for this workshop.

Feel free to call or email me for scheduling if you know of a group that would be interested in a presentation. Also contact me if there are other related topics on which you would like me to develop a presentation.

Psychotherapy

I generally have some openings for psychotherapy with adolescents, adults, couples and families. Although I do assessments with children down to age 6, I am not currently doing psychotherapy with younger individuals. My therapy style is based on an integration of psychodynamic, family systems and attachment theory, informed by neuroscience and with an emphasis on interpersonal relationship.

There is an exciting convergence of research across psychological disciplines that is really beginning to crystallize what is important in effectively helping people change and overcome their personal hurdles. Much as subtleties of your relationship with your parents determined the foundations of how you relate to others, an essential part of therapy is the therapeutic relationship. Broadly, perhaps the most crucial factor in successful relationships is "differentiated emotional attunement." This is a fancy term for being able to know your own thoughts and feelings at multiple levels, while also being able to understand, empathize with and reflect another person’s thoughts and feelings.

Applied to the therapeutic relationship, this means I as a therapist must be able to attune to you as a client as we work together on the things that concern you. Over time, repeated successful attunements allow you to have a more healing emotional experience, which then can transfer to all your other relationships--most importantly with your partners or children. Done properly, this allows children to develop independence born of security, and it enables adults to negotiate their different needs with each other to reach workable compromises in living and loving. This isn't to say that parents or people must be perfect in all interchanges, but they must be "good enough" in general, including recognizing inevitable times when they have strayed too far from understanding each other, and subsequently repairing these emotional mistakes.

Within the context of this kind of therapeutic relationship you can uncover unconscious (out of awareness) obstacles which can then be more effectively dealt with, and get perspective on unhelpful patterns you may be stuck in. In most cases this is long-term work. By bringing these impediments to light, their hold on you lessens, making you freer to live the way you would like to live. I am also interested in—and apply—recent findings from so called positive psychology, which converges with spiritual principles of mindfulness, appreciation, and service to others.

Typically my style is relatively active and psychoeducational at the outset of therapy, transitioning to more client autonomy as therapy progresses. My work in formal assessment and neuropsychology gives me a clearer focus, allowing me to hone in on the essential issues. I only take a few therapy clients at a time so that I can give you the time, energy and thought that you deserve. Please call for a free phone consultation so we can discuss how I might be able to help you.

Website design by HYPERSPHERE