About Psychotherapy

CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY - COUNSELING

Psychotherapy is a process in which the client and therapist work together to help resolve the client’s personal and relationship challenges.  There may be a number of different approaches to resolve the issues you hope to address.  In order for therapy to be most successful, it is best to work on concerns that are being talked about both during therapy sessions and outside of therapy.  Therapy has both benefits and risks and often leads to a significant reduction in feelings of distress, better relationships, and solutions to specific problems.   Counseling also helps to identify personal strengths and challenges.
At times, psychotherapy requires discussing unpleasant aspects of your life that may initially result in uncomfortable feelings and other unexpected results.   However, once issues are addressed and eventually resolved, therapy can be extremely rewarding.

Psychotherapy is most effective when clients open up and share their feelings and experiences as freely as possible.   Understandably, some people are more comfortable expressing themselves in therapy than others.   It is important to feel comfortable with the psychotherapist, clinical psychologist, therapist or counselor you choose.   Although you may not initially open up as much as you would like in therapy, feeling safe with your therapist is essential.   This level of trust will help you to eventually open up and talk freely with your therapist once you feel comfortable.

In general, the privacy of all communication between client and therapist is protected by law and can only be released to others with the client’s written permission.   However, there are some situations in which California law mandates certain exceptions to confidentiality when the therapist is legally and/or ethically required to take action to protect the client or others from harm.   These situations include: abuse (child abuse, elder abuse, dependent adult abuse), serious threat of harm to oneself or serious threat of serious bodily harm to another.

Therapy sessions for individuals are typically 50 minutes and take place on a weekly basis.   For couples and families sessions may be longer since the number of people increases the time needed to discuss various issues.   Typically for couples and families sessions are 60-90 minutes once per week.   However, everyone’s situation is unique and therefore some session lengths and frequency may vary depending upon each client’s needs and desires.

I provide a confidential, safe, warm environment where clients feel comfortable exploring a variety of topics.   Please feel free to contact me to discuss how we can work together.