- Are your relationships what you want them to be?
- Are you stuck in patterns you don’t know how to get out of?
- Have you been in therapy that isn’t satisfying your needs?
- Are depression, anxiety, trauma or old family issues still weighing heavily in your life?
When you live with problem for a long time, it can become stale. You become hopeless and angry. Are you angry because you think there is a solution and you can’t find it? What if there isn’t a solution? What if the solution is, learning how to live with unresolved circumstances with dignity and joy.
If you have a money problem, we can talk about how to make a budget, and how to stick to it. We can help you be accountable on a regular basis. If you come in every week, or every other week, with a budget; here’s what I made and what I spent; we go over it and it can be tweaked. See? This isn’t my favorite kind of counseling. I may not be your guy. BUT, I do focus on (for example) “why do you keep buying your kids whatever they want when you know you can’t afford it?” That is different than “OK, spend $100 a week on your kids instead of $200.” The difference is we look at the symptom of the problem. Then you decide about change. We see together what goes on for you as you change. Or as you don’t change.
And your decision about change has more to do with your relationships than with your budget. In this way, it is an ongoing process, and we work together.
Second. This is important. Some things can’t be resolved. If you are preoccupied with people who have wronged you, or who aren’t doing what you want, you may be wasting your time. How long are you going to spin your wheels fuming about something that happened in 1997 when the other people involved go about their business never giving it a second thought? What’s in it for you? Can you put that energy into something else?
But you CAN change your attitude and your behavior towards those people and those situations. I’m not saying it’s easy. I’m just saying it’s doable.
It’s a radical idea. I’m not going to promise something I can’t deliver. Individual counseling, then, has a new job. That is, if it can’t be changed, we work together on how to live with it.
Next. What kind of problem is it? There’s a difference between wanting your kids to observe curfew and being in an abusive situation. Curfew problems CAN begin like the money example above. They don’t always stay that simple, but sometimes they do. However, abuse is completely different.
Trauma victims often don’t know there is a way out. I have treated complex trauma since 2001. In addition to standard psychotherapy for trauma, I sometimes use EMDR, a cutting-edge technique for trauma treatment. For more information about what that is, refer to the following website. http://www.emdr.com/what-is-emdr/
My philosophy will always be grounded in RCT, that growth and change occur in healthy relationships and that most psychological distress can be found because of isolation. Please refer to the page about Relational Cultural Therapy for more info. We believe to the bottom of our souls that by having healthy relationships, we can heal myriad problems, and create an atmosphere of healing.