Individual and Couple Counseling
- Personal growth
- Sexuality/sexual orientation, gender identity/expression (gay/lesbian/transgender issues)
- Relationship health
- Infertility counseling
- Perinatal mood disorders (see Infertility page)
- Anxiety and depression including well managed bi-polar disorder and mood disturbance
- Sexual trauma
- Body image and lifestyle
- Grief and loss (adult death, death of a child, pregnancy, miscarriage, divorce)
- Recovery after significant relationship betrayal SAIT: theinstituteforsexualhealth.com
- Understanding and managing stress – both external and internal sources of stress (see Mind-Body page)
- EMDR (for more information on EMDR please visit: www.emdria.org/?page=2
Couple or relationship counseling is quite different from what one might experience in individual therapy.
Taking the time to truly establish an understanding of the issues and the dynamic of practice between all three participants (including myself as therapist), can have a moderately steep learning curve therefore to establish ‘fit’ and goals I encourage a short conversation between both partners and myself (individually or together) before setting up the first appointment.
Julie and John Gottman (www.gottman.com) suggest that couples in medium long-term relationships (15 years or so) tend to seek out couple therapy about 7 years after they might have most benefited from it. Given that 7 years has over 61,000 hrs and a typical therapy session is only 1 hr and reflects .00076% of the time that a couple of 15+ years has been together, I have great respect for what each session is building toward over time.
Full commitment from both parties, a sense of purpose and direction in the healing and/or change and patience are the best indicators for seeing progress in the relationship.