Areas of Expertise
Dialectic Behavior Therapy
This is a treatment that focuses on learning a variety of behavioral skills including mindfulness practice, interpersonal effectiveness, emotion regulation, and distress tolerance. It is useful in treating a variety of psychological disorders like depressive disorders, anxiety disorders, and trauma disorders. It is particularly useful for people who frequently deal with very intense emotions. Treatment involves looking at one's behavior and selecting a behavioral skill to effectively deal with an encountered situation, thought, or emotion.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
This is a treatment that looks at patterns in our thinking and behavior that could be contributing to dysfunction in our lives and problem solving to change those patterns. Dialectic Behavior Therapy is a form of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy with a greater focus on emotions and behavioral skills, particularly mindfulness skills and dialectical thinking.
Motivational Interviewing
This is a treatment that views the client as the expert in their own experience and where client and therapist collaboratively reach solutions to achieve goals set by the client. This is the governing philosophy of my practice and how I strive to engage with my clients.
My Approach
DBT is a behavioral therapy, and research has demonstrated that behavioral therapies work best when work is done by the client between sessions. This means that there will be homework at the end of each of my sessions. Skills taught in DBT are like any other skill and need to be practiced to be effective. No one learns to drive by talking about cars for an hour a week. You need to put time behind the wheel to nail that exam (and keep everyone safe). Homework in my sessions is different from school though. Assignments are made collaboratively and are tailored to my client's goals and what they find important. I have plenty of worksheets and handouts, and all of them are customizable.
Therapy starts with my client developing goals for therapy and life, and the sessions themselves become a mix of teaching and practicing skills, identifying patterns in our lives that could be getting in the way of those goals, and finding approaches to get those goals achieved.
Ultimately, my approach is to empower my clients to achieve the goals they want to achieve in life. I want to teach clients to eventually be their own therapists and work myself out of a job.
