Psychotherapy & Assessment Services

 

What to Expect

Please call or email me to set up an initial phone consultation. This will be a time for you to express your therapy hopes and concerns, and for us to identify ways to collaborate and support your efforts. We can also go over logistics as scheduling and payment. You can ask me questions about my clinical approach and background and about therapy in general.  

Let’s connect 

Individual Therapy

In psychotherapy, you and I work collaboratively to facilitate positive and desired change and improve your quality of life. Therapy can help people confront barriers that interfere with their functioning, relationships, productivity and emotional and mental well-being. Through psychotherapy, you can gain access to greater knowledge of yourself and your environment, and practice changes in your behaviors, thoughts, perceptions and relationships. Therapy can increase positive feelings such as compassion, love, courage, and peace. By going on this journey you do something for yourself; invest in your quality of life and your personal growth. Through the psychotherapy process we learn.

You can learn skills and create new experiences and possibilities for yourself, cultivate and strengthen abilities, or focus on untangling current knots of tension and stuckness in your relationships with yourself and with others, in your learning style, and your emotional well being.

Therapy includes pscyhoeducation about the different aspects of your current mental state; advocacy; exploration and empowerment; emotional support and encouragement; teaching of specific skills and techniques; structuring and organizing; clarifying current and past difficulties and experiences; creating together creative solutions for your areas of struggle; and moving you towards an active stance and sense of power, self-awareness and appreciation.

Child Therapy

I work with children and their families through play therapy, psychodynamic therapy, and cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy. In child therapy we focus on teaching adaptive skills while encouraging expression and self advocacy. Child therapy is often helpful for coping with anxiety, depression, insomnia, trauma, social worry, obsessional thoughts or irrational fears, social difficulties, self esteem and body image concerns, adjustment to recent changes such as transitioning from K to 1st grade, new baby in the family, moving and relocation, parents’ separation. Therapy supports the  child and parents and allows for more successful coping with social, academic, and developmental challenges in the future. 

Couples Therapy

Therapy provides opportunities for relearning and practicing healthier ways of being together, relating, and communicating. By encouraging awareness, commitment, and trust and fostering collaborative and hopeful actions your relationship can improve.

Whether there is a specific stressor or conflict in your relationship that you would like to resolve or there is a need for a deeper rebuilding of a new phase in your relationship psychotherapy can support and guide you through these changes. In therapy we explore goals, hopes, core difficulties and strengths and encourage creative and active attempts at resolution. We identify habits, patterns, and outcomes of our thoughts, perceptions and actions, and facilitate clarification and change of these often unnoticed responses and cycles.

Couples therapy can help couples in building the early foundations of their connection, in untangling stuck places in years long relationship or in recovering from a crisis or times or disconnect or tension.

 

Psychological Testing and Assessment

I provide assessment and testing services to children, adolescents and adults. The testing process is tailored to answer your questions and is focused on your needs. It is highly individualized and varies according to clients’ areas of concern or curiosity. If you are interested in learning more about this process, contact me.

Here are the big categories of the type of insight we can learn about your experience and function-

Psychological Testing: I use well-researched and clinically supported assessments to better understand various aspects of your life. Psychological testing can be used as a tool to aid treatment as it identifies and clarifies your experience and struggles in areas like-

  • mood
  • personality style
  • preoccupations
  • attachment
  • professional orientation
  • attention
  • communication

  • identity
  • social interactions
  • thought process and patterns
  • self esteem
  • family dynamics
  • interpersonal skills and preferences

Psychological testing is often used to assess a diagnosis or a difficulty, which can be helpful when applying for accommodations in school or work. It is also required in the application for special considerations on standardized exams as the SAT, ACT, MCAT, GRE, LSAT and GMAT.

Cognitive Testing:  IQ and Achievement tests help outline the strengths, preferences and challenges of your thought process. These forms of general assessments include clarification of  your current capacities for-

  • abstract thought
  • non-verbal/perceptual reasoning skills
  • problem solving
  • memory
  • visual-spatial ability
  • impulsivity

  • social comprehension
  • organization
  • processing speed
  • judgement
  • verbal learning

Executive Functioning:  EF assessment evaluates self-regulation, problem solving, organization, inhibition, level of activity, planning, capacity for meta-cognition (self-awareness), and working memory.

Additional forms of assessments are Behavioral, these evaluate treatment compliance, behavior in the class room or other settings, aggression, attention,  organic impairment and risk. Behavioral assessments are often used as a complimentary tool when assessing IQ, achievement, and executive functioning.

Neuropsychological Testing: evaluates neurodevelopmental conditions such as ADHD, Autism, concussion, and learning disorders. Neuropsych testing allows a more detailed understanding of the neurological processes involved with language, attention, visual-spatial functioning, memory and executive functioning.

e-Counseling

Weekly video therapy sessions can be suitable for many people. Online therapy might be for you if you’re leading a busy life with an unconventional or limited schedule, if you travel a lot, if you are socially anxious or struggle with meeting face-to-face and a variety of other circumstances.

E-Counseling makes therapy accessible if you are not mobile, if you live in a remote place or a small community, and have difficulty finding services in your area. Individual therapy through a video platform is offered to adults in long and short-term treatments. Want to learn more?

Together we can figure out what works for you