About Me
Who am I as a Helping Professional?
I am a licensed clinical social worker by graduate training with five years of post masters training in psychotherapy. I have worked as a psychotherapist and couples counselor for 18 years. I have written all the articles on this website and formerly taught as an adjunct professor at colleges and universities in NJ. It is my inspired calling to help others reinvent themselves so they might make their visions for change, realities. I integrate psycho-dynamic, family systems, cognitive-behavioral and mindfulness concepts, i.e., meditation, into individually tailored treatment plans. I will support and work in harmony with patients sponsored by 12 step fellowship groups.
The therapeutic alliance is designed to be a model relationship to be borrowed from and replicated in satisfying and meaningful ways outside my office. Compassion, honesty, humility, acceptance, patience, concern, kindness, integrity, empathy, respect and consideration are some of the core values that guide my work and build patients' trust and confidence in myself to further their best interests at all times.
Psychotherapy: Every Day People Solving Problems Of Every Day Living
Will you talk to anyone about your relationship except your partner because discussions are exasperating, painful and depressing cycles of attack and counterattack?
Do you find yourself feeling compelled to please your partner, failing no matter how hard you try, and getting no respect and consideration for trying? To make matters worse do you find yourself unwilling to stand up for yourself for fear of being rejected and/or abandoned?
Does your self esteem rise and fall like an unstable stock market as if everyone controls how you feel about yourself and how you treat yourself except you?
Do you expect perfection of yourself and others so as to feel unhappy with yourself and others, and leaving others hurt and unhappy with you?
Do you ever feel so empty, numb or cut off from yourself that the pain of feeling useless and worthless to yourself and others drives you to drink, drug, eat, gamble, spend, or have sex to escape your misery?
If so you are not alone and I can help. I will provide you a place of safety and security where together we will answer the question: What tools, strategies, and mindsets do you need to learn from myself for you to improve the quality of your life?
How Does Psychotherapy Work?
A greenhouse is a controlled environment that establishes as close to ideal conditions as possible to protect and nurture growing plants during their stages of greatest vulnerability to potentially inhospitable outside forces. The greenhouse is an excellent metaphor to describe the therapeutic alliance. It's a warm environment controlled to maximize conditions that encourage and promote your freedom to and safety to experiment risk free, with new ways of relating to and trying out effective strategies for achieving your most cherished goals.
Another helpful metaphor and teaching tool is the renovation of a building. Just like a building that depends on scaffolding to maintain the structure's integrity while its weight bearing supports are being reinforced or replaced, I lend my experience, creativity, presence, and training to help you maintain the structural integrity or infrastructure of a self you have relied to navigate your way through life. Meanwhile, together we replace, rehabilitate, strengthen, and rebuild obsolete, self-defeating, misleading, and ineffective mindsets that have brought you into psychotherapy. Once the renovation is complete, you will have grown in your trust and appreciation of your creative capacities for engineering desired changes in your life so as to render the scaffolding (my services) no longer necessary.
