Individual therapy isn’t just for dealing with crises; it can also help you with personal growth, improving relationships, and achieving your goals. It can provide you with tools to manage mental health conditions such as depression, anxiety, PTSD, substance use and more.
Couples counseling is beneficial for anyone looking to improve their relationship, address specific challenges, or simply maintain a healthy and fulfilling partnership. Couples counseling can be especially useful for couples experiencing frequent conflicts, facing life transitions, dealing with infidelity, and struggling with intimacy issues. It can also be helpful for couples preparing for marriage or exploring ethical non-monogamy.
Trauma-focused therapy is a type of psychotherapy specifically designed to help individuals deal with the emotional and psychological effects of traumatic experiences. The goal is to process and integrate the trauma to reduce its impact on your daily life. This form of therapy considers the wide-ranging impacts of trauma, recognizing trauma can affect not just your mental health, but also physical health, relationships, and overall functioning.
Attachment-based therapy centers on research showing early relationships with caregivers form the basis for how we later form relationships. It aims to help you understand and heal attachment wounds by examining childhood experiences and their impact on current behaviors. Benefits of attachment-focused therapy includes greater emotional stability and resilience as well as improved capacity to manage your stress and negative emotions.
Let's get to know each other before we decide to work together. This free meeting is done over secure video-chat, so you can meet with me from anywhere in California.
Tell me what's going on in your life and why you are looking for a therapist. Feel free to tell me about your hopes and goals for therapy so I can make sure I'm able to provide you with the help you are looking for.
Take time after our meeting to reflect on whether or not you feel that I "get you" and that I'm easy to speak with. These are important parts of building a safe, secure therapeutic relationship. I want you to feel confident in your decision to work together.
While everyone’s issues are unique, I’ve worked as a licensed psychologist for quite a while. I’m certain that in the course of my training and experience I’ve worked someone similar to you. That being said, I am always careful to treat each client as an individual with their own set of life experiences, their own family background, and their own cultural background.
Therapy is a collaborative process. Together we will create a set of goals as well as a pathway to reach these goals. These goals will reflect your experiences. My work is not one size fits all but rather, something designed especially for you.
I do my best to have appointment times available through out the week in the morning, afternoon, and evenings. All of my scheduling is done online so you can set up an appointment when it is easy for you to do so. I do ask you to cancel appointments within a 48 hours time frame.
Session typically run somewhere between 50 minutes to an hour. How often we meet depends on a number of factors: whether you’re in crisis; how much time you have available for therapy; and financial constraints, to name a few. Most of my clients have weekly sessions. Some see me every other week. At the start of working together, I will not see a client any less that every other week.
Being rapport starts with our first contact. You’ll be able to email me, text me, or call me and actually reach me — not a secretary or office manager. Our initial meeting is another starting point for building rapport; we’ll get a chance to meet each other an make sure we’re comfortable working together. Building trust takes time and while I know I am trustworthy, it is something you will discover in our work together. I also welcome feedback from clients so if you do feel there is something “off” with our relationship or that you can’t trust me, we can always talk about it and make any needed corrections.
I believe tracking progress is an important part of therapy. I use a platform called “Blueprint” to assist with this process. Once you are signed up, you will occasionally receive a survey from me that assesses things like depression, anxiety, substance use, etc. It also records how you feel about our relationship and whether or not you feel that therapy is moving in a beneficial direction.
Absolutely! In fact, I rely on client feedback to improve my therapeutic skills. I strive to be the most effective therapist for each client and can only do that with the feedback and suggestions supplied by my clients.
Yes. Over the years, I have worked with clients from many diverse cultural backgrounds. I have also worked with LGBTQ+ from the day I started seeing clients at my first office in West Hollywood, CA. I’ve worked with survivors of trauma as well as people struggling with alcohol and drugs and in recovery. I’ve also worked with neurodiverse clients including adult clients with ADHD and those on the autism spectrum.
Clients are free to text, email or call me between sessions. I do my best to get back to clients as quickly as possible. However, if you have a life threatening emergency, you should go to the nearest emergency room. Another mode of communication for between sessions that I highly recommend is found in the Blueprint app I use with clients. There is an option to send me notes for our next session. I always review these before I meet with clients so I can stay fresh with the events of their lives.
Our first meeting is a very casual introductory meeting. It’s designed to give me a quick overview of what’s bringing you into therapy and what you hope to accomplish. I will not force you to talk about anything yo do want to or go into great depth on any topic unless that is something you want to do. The initial meeting will also give you a chance to see what it’s like to talk to me to make sure you feel comfortable. It’s also a great time to ask questions. What you won’t get at our initial meeting is any pressure to sign up as a client. It’s very important to me that you feel free to make the decision in your own time and in a way that is consistent with your personality.
I am not an in-network provider for any insurance plans. However, if you have a PPO plan, your insurance may cover some of our work together. It’s best for you to ask your insurance company if your plan includes out-of-network mental health benefits. We can talk more about payments and the claims process at the initial meeting.
Not at all. I am licensed as a psychologist in the state of California which means I can treat anyone within the state — from San Diego to San Francisco.
I feel very strongly about confidentiality. What you say to me is between you and me. I have no desire to repeat what you say to me. Legally and ethically I am prohibited from sharing what you tell me or letting anyone you are seeing me. There are three exceptions to confidentiality that rarely come up and apply to extreme situations where you are going to act on plans to hurt others or hurt yourself as well as situations involving child abuse and elder abuse. The technology I use is all HIPAA compliant. If you have concerns about confidentiality, please feel free to ask questions at our initial meeting or email me.
You need never worry about asking me questions. I do my best to answer any question that comes my way unless I feel it would be detrimental to our work together. Sometimes I may ask you to answer a quetsion first but I will always do my best to give you the information you’re looking for.
Appointments are available morning, afternoon, and evening. Virtual meetings allow you to work with me from anywhere in California
