General Practice and Consultation
General Practice refers to “treatment” approaches, while Consultation is often brief, with meetings as needed.
These are challenging times for parents and children. I help people with these and other typical family problems in short-term counseling and coaching sessions:
- You may be seeking consultation and coaching about parenting or discipline, how to deal with a young child’s tantrums or sibling rivalry, an older child’s shyness or anxiety, or an acting out adolescent.
- Your child may be struggling with fears, anxieties, or school-related problems.
- Marital relationships are often strained by these difficult relationships. Parent-child relationships often suffer too.
- Your children may need help dealing with a divorce or death in their family.
- You may benefit from co-parenting counseling with an ex-spouse with whom you share custody time.
- Step-family issues can present themselves at any time, and you may struggle with your role (or your new partner’s) as a step-parent.
- We want our children to be successful. You will find some useful parenting guidelines at the Challenge Success website.
- When parents divorce, their children are deeply affected. From custody battles to disagreements about discipline to remarriage, it is important for separated parents to work toward respectful communication for the sake of their children. The holidays are a time when many challenges are brought to the forefront. I joined Nurse Rona and guests on "Childhood Matters" radio show discussing ideas for confronting the needs of children of divorced parents — feelings of loss, abandonment, and more. Here is a link to the archived interview on Dec. 6, 2008, "Children of Divorce" and Basic tips for co-parenting after divorce [pdf].
Stress management issues seem to be epidemic:
- I can teach you or your child stress management tools and techniques which will help you control the effects of stress. I work with adults and children to help them learn various strategies to cope with or minimize stress.
- I believe that therapy should be useful, interesting, and perhaps even playful. I use approaches including Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), play therapy, art therapy, EMDR and hypnotherapy with children and adults as appropriate.
Perhaps you have come to a stage in your life when you would like to deeply know yourself in new ways. Some people call it “personal growth work”:
- Often we search for meaning at times of transition in our lives, and this is often an opportunity to make very positive changes.
- People seek help because of long-term relationship difficulties, anger problems, reluctance to make commitments, low self-esteem, or a desire for “something more” in life.
- Perhaps you have wondered about terms like “personal growth” or “transformation.”
- I help people sort through their personal histories in search of their values, or what they “stand for.”
- We examine core beliefs that are unconsciously and powerfully influencing your life today.
- Together we “unpack” and “inventory” the stories and beliefs you have carried with you, opening up the option to keep, revise or discard your no-longer-useful beliefs or stories.
Trauma work:
- Trauma and the resulting anxiety happen to most of us at some point in our lives.
- Whether you have experienced a recent or a childhood medical or emotional trauma, a car accident, chronic stress or an acute incident, you don't have to live with unhappiness, fears, phobias, or worries.
- Perhaps you have been diagnosed with PTSD.
- Using tools that have been validated by decades of research, such as EMDR, and CBT, you can rediscover your strengths, or develop new ones, and take back control of your life.
- I work with emergency responders and their families in my private practice as well as with WCPR.
