Through talk therapy, together we will explore and attempt to answer the question: why it is that you continue behaving in ways which prevent you from experiencing happiness?
Everyone develops character traits to help cope with life. Some of these traits lead to happiness – but at times, some of them lead to unhappiness and anxiety. By exploring these traits – whether through long-term or short-term therapy – you can take the first step towards increased satisfaction and pleasure and decreased anxiety and frustration.
Through the therapy process, you will come to understand what motivates self-destructive behaviors – which will help you to better control them and ultimately, to break them. This in turn will better enable you to make healthy and supportive choices, so that you can achieve your goals and ambitions.
You will also understand what causes the desire to avoid experiencing your feelings directly, which is the root cause of many conflicts. As a result, you will learn to be more accepting of your feelings…and to live in the present without being burdened by the past.
The work of therapy helps you accept the whole range of emotions and learn to become comfortable with your feelings and experience them more directly – so that you can acknowledge them as they truly are. This in turn helps you to handle and tolerate uncomfortable situations… and in a larger sense, allows you to deal with the realities of the world as they are.
Our progress is assessed by personal goals set to your satisfaction.
Interpersonal Relationships
Together, we will seek to understand the underlying causes of difficulties in key relationships in your life, including:
Parenting Difficulties and Issues – Helping you to better understand your child(ren)’s needs in order to be a more effective parent; helping you to address your own difficulties and concerns over your parenting skills.
Work Relationships – Helping you to become more successful in your job by understanding how you work with/relate to co-workers and what you contribute to the work environment that prevents you from performing optimally.
Romantic Difficulties and Issues – Improving your ability to communicate – which is one of the most important areas of a relationship; learning how you and your partner can better hear one another, understand what you each need from each other, and constructively argue or disagree without the loss of love.
Parent/Adult Children Issues – Helping parents and adult children to more comfortably relate to each other as equals and understand each other’s needs, while working through unresolved history – past events that still cause difficulty in the present.
Adult Sibling Issues – Dealing with past and present issues such as rivalry, competition, parental favoritism and birth order.
Social Issues / Difficulties –Focusing on problems interacting with others – such as difficulty making and keeping friends – and on feelings such as self-consciousness, expecting criticism and judgment, and expecting rejection from others.
Emotional Health Issues
Together, we will explore the unconscious motivations behind issues relating to your emotional health and well-being. Our goal is to lessen the intensity and degree of feelings such as:
Anxiety – Extreme, constant worry; feelings of dread; avoidance of certain situations
Fear – Experiencing frequent extreme or exaggerated fright over certain objects, settings or situations
Depression – Emptiness, hopelessness, lack of energy, suicidal thoughts
Anger / Road Rage – Inability to control temper, inappropriate or disproportionate anger responses, excessive anger over traffic incidents
Mourning, Grief & Loss – Inability to get on with life, feelings of guilt, survivor guilt
Addictions
Together, we will explore and understand the motivating factors that cause addictive or compulsive behaviors – with the aim of helping you completely control or refrain from them. Some common addictive behaviors are:
Smoking / Drinking / Theft – Use of alcohol to “medicate” one’s feelings, shoplifting
Eating Disorders – Bulimia, anorexia, binge eating
Over-Exercising – The compulsion to “work out” constantly
Sexual Addictions / Perversions
Other Excessive Habits / Behaviors