I value the uniqueness of you. Therefore, I approach therapy from your needs and your perspective. I want you to feel that our time together is covering what is important to you and that you are feeling a direct benefit from therapy. I feel the most important factor to making therapy successful is a “good fit” between the therapist and you the client. I work hard to keep the healing process on track and actively seek feedback from you to make sure that you are getting what you came to therapy for. If after coming to therapy you are not able to honestly say, “Yes, this is helping” or “Yes, I am feeling better” then we will either try something else or I will work to find other resources for you. It is important to me that your therapy is understandable and makes your life different.

 Many therapists emphasize one specific approach to therapy (i.e. a psychodynamic approach emphasizes the past, a cognitive therapist looks at your thinking patterns, behavioral therapists look at specific behaviors, etc.). Different therapists, therefore, may view various problems as stemming from different sources such as a difficult childhood, incompetent parenting, faulty thinking patterns, peer pressure, or cultural dynamics.

I prefer an eclectic approach designed to meet the needs of each specific client and problem within a goal oriented short-term therapy process. Taking each client’s unique history and personality into consideration, an eclectic approach may involve the use of several theories and techniques to approach a particular problem from the perspective that appears most accurate and beneficial to the client.

In some cases, I may think it important that an individual become more aware of his/her own background and history and the role his/her past may have played in the development or maintenance of current issues. Lessons from the past are sometimes useful to present decisions and plan for the future.
In other cases, I may view the history or specific cause of a particular problem as no longer relevant to the search for current solutions. In all cases, I view problem analysis and the search for answers to be collaboration between myself and the client.