About Therapy with Me

As your therapist, I will carefully listen and assist you through your own unique time of change. I will provide a respectful and safe space for you to examine, understand, and clarify your issues, formulate new goals and responses, and develop a sense of meaning and hope for the future.

I offer counseling and psychotherapy to adults, teens, couples, families and children in the following areas:

• Grief, Loss and Depression
• Alcohol and Drug Abuse/Recovery/ACA issues
• Childhood and Adult Trauma
• Relationship and Intimacy Problems
• Premarital/ Marital and Partnering Adjustment
• Prebirth/Adjusting to a new child
• Parenting Problems/Single Parenting/Step-Parenting and Blended Families
• Women and Aging
• Life Threatening Illness/Chronic Illness
• End of Life Issues/Death of a Loved One
• Work Life Issues

Over the years I have worked with people from all socio-economic cultures and walks of life. This includes students of all ages, young adults, parents, policemen, doctors, lawyers, teachers, caregivers, military couples, Vietnam War vets, Coast Guard families, artists and writers, gays, lesbians and those with sexual identity issues, folks who are doubting their faith, and people who have lost hope in the future.

You will find me to be warm and empathic, intelligent, thoughtful, nonjudgmental, a good listener and, sometimes, funny. My way of working is interactive and intuitive, having integrated my education and training into my thinking, so that I can be fully present. I also am able to ask the hard questions you may have been waiting for.

Initially, to make an appointment, we will talk on the phone, briefly discussing your reason for wanting my service. If I am qualified to work with your issues, we can proceed to make an appointment time and verbally agree on your fee for my service. If you have contacted me via the Internet, we will still need, for confidentiality reasons, to speak on the phone. I do not provide therapy on the Internet.

At our first face-to-face meeting, we will discuss, in depth, your reason for coming to therapy and determine if I am the right therapist for you. Sometimes, it takes a couple of sessions, but more likely than not, by the end of our first meeting, we will both know whether to continue the therapeutic relationship.

Once we have agreed to work together, we will discuss your goals and how best to reach them. It is important that you identify your goals, so that I can assist you in achieving them. Your therapy experience may be short-term or long-term, depending upon the issues you bring, your life experiences, your temperament, and your goals. I will never superimpose my goals onto you. You are the only one who can determine what you want.


Major theories I subscribe to and work from include:

Cognitive-Behavioral techniques can be very effective for short-term therapy. My role is to be your teacher and coach, helping you to be alert to your own thinking patterns that get in your way of solving the problem. This form of therapy involves your active participation in "homework" exercises and workbooks, which can give you a new way of looking at and dealing with your problems. It is most effective when working individually or in a group with others who have similar problems.

Strategic Family Therapy is a system-based therapy to work with families, focusing on the interaction of family members, with interventions designed to assist them to work more effectively together and to support one another. With an emphasis on the present, this form of therapy can be most creative and interactive. It is appropriate for short-term work and for less regular appointments over a six month time frame.

Bowen Family Therapy is appropriate in individual and family therapy. It is a way of looking at you as a part of your family, i.e., what you have taken, both consciously and unconsciously, from your first family (your grandparents, parents, and others who have influenced you) and what you have brought to your current family and/or other close relationships. In this therapy, you will come to understand yourself and those you love in a deeper and more compassionate way. This process can produce effective ways of healing relationships with others, loving and disagreeing, and reducing the anxiety that is both cause and effect of conflict.

Jungian oriented therapy involves a process of examination of your inner world. It is based on the work of C.G. Jung who documented imagery and archetypes of the Psyche which can be found, from ancient times, in people from all parts of the world. Jung called this region the Collective Unconscious, accessible through our dreams, creative processes, and play. This type of therapy is usually done with individual adults and is considered depth psychology.

Sandplay originated with the work of Jungian Analyst, Dora Kalff. Believing the Psyche to be self-healing, she documented her work and research in the use of Sandplay. This therapy uses a rectangular tray of sand and figures which represent various aspects of our worlds, concrete and spiritual. It can be especially healing for both adults and children. Truly, in this work, a picture is worth a thousand words.


Now to business:

Availability: Wednesday afternoon and evening appointments are held at my office location in Lafayette, California. Other days I am available for home visits in the local area (as arranged).

My fee for service is:
          $125.00 for a 50 minute individual session.
          $175.00 for a 75 minute family session.

Unless otherwise agreed upon in our contract, your fee for service is to be paid at the beginning of each session by either cash or check.

Currently, I am not on any insurance panels; however, I will cooperate with you to get your reimbursement for payment of my services.