Frequently Asked Questions
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A licensed marriage and family therapist is a masters level, trained mental health professional, who is held to strict standards of practice, confidentiality, and overseen by state licensing boards to ensure consumer protections and safety. This is distinct from a growing trend of “life-coaching,” which is not overseen by any state licensing board, and not required to adhere to any recognized standard of practice, offering little to no consumer protection. A marriage and family therapist is uniquely trained in multiple, evidence based forms of psychotherapy, that directly address behavioral patterns and relational dynamics. The therapist-client relationship should reflect healthy boundaries, model empathy and compassion, and serve as a template clients can emulate in their relationships outside of therapy. For this reason, it is important to find a therapist with whom you feel comfortable, supported, and most of all, safe.
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Individual therapy is often a precursor or adjunct to couples and marriage therapy. We need first be “right” with ourselves, before we can be “right” with others. As such, there are often many intra-personal challenges, struggles, and wounds that persist as obstacles in connecting with others. These are best addressed within the safety of one-to-one, individual therapy.
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As human beings, we are intuitively drawn to recreate the circumstances of our “core wound,” with hopes of achieving a different outcome. We find in our significant other the very conflict we have yet to resolve within ourselves. The result is either reinjury or repair, and this depends on whether the significant other is fundamentally a “safe” person with a capacity for empathy. The “dance” we did as children with our primary caregiver, is invariably the dance we duplicate in our adult relationships. Without awareness, we are very often reinjured. With awareness, we can “change the tune.” Safety and compassion within the therapist/client relationship is, itself, a fundamental part of the healing process. Where there has been trauma, a person will often “attach” to a substance, a chemical, or compulsive behavior, as a substitute. Attachment therapy is an effective orientation in helping people cultivate authentic relationships.
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The first therapy session is about establishing a foundation of safety, understanding and compassion. The therapist is intent on looking through a client’s eyes with a client’s heart to understand their world, their pains, their joys, and the people in it.
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Each therapy session is 50 minutes long and generally once per week. As progress is made and gains are consolidated, frequency of sessions is reduced. My goal is to get clients to a point where they no longer need me. If I foster dependence, I am not doing my job. Depending on the gravity of a client’s presenting concerns and their motivation to change and grow, after perhaps six to eight weeks on average, clients begin to come less frequently.
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I am legally mandated, as are all health professionals, to hold clients' information in strict confidence. Exceptions to this include concerns of child, elder, or adult dependent abuse, or if there is a threat of harm to self or another person.
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I am licensed in both Texas and California, and provide therapy across state lines. I often provide virtual teletherapy when one is in California and the other is in Texas.
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I accept cash, check, or credit at the time of the appointment. I am out of network and not on any insurance panels. Depending on a client’s insurance provider, and any out of network mental health benefits, I often submit claims on clients’ behalf, as an out of network provider, as a courtesy to clients. I accept payment up front, and any reimbursement from insurance goes back to the client. In some circumstances, when therapy may be cost prohibitive, I offer a sliding scale.
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I have a 24 hour cancellation policy. Barring a legitimate emergency, cancellations within 24 hours of a scheduled appointment will result in full fee charge. This is not intended to be punitive: The therapy hour is held for you, the client, and late cancellations do not provide adequate time to fill the hour for other clients, often in crisis.
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The opposite of addiction is “connection.” Substances and compulsive behaviors are placeholders for authentic human relationships. For many, those substances served a purpose, and were perhaps adaptive in persevering through adversity. But then an expiration date arrives, and those substances have become major barriers to health and relationships. I work with clients in establishing action plans to cultivate enduring sobriety, with strategies to fill the space created by the exit of the substance or compulsion, with healthy alternatives and tools to cultivate authentic connection with others.
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I have been an industry professional for over 30 years. I have worked in many capacities, as an actor and producer, from stage to screen, from small independent films to major studio features. I have worked closely with many Hollywood luminaries, and have an intimate understanding of the unique challenges of navigating an often brutal, even punishing career in entertainment and art.
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I employ the principle of unconditional positive regard. When a person experiences acceptance, and the good in them is seen and acknowledged, the better and best versions of themselves step forward. Different behaviors that are borne of pain obscure the “sunlight of the spirit.” Each of us is not the sum total of the bad choices we made, but possess inherent worth, dignity, and beauty. We can all benefit from someone “outside the trees,” to help redirect us to that place of acceptance and compassion.
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With empathy, we collectively identify the individual and systemic obstacles to change, resistance points, and negotiate strategies to inspire change. Understanding and compassion are foundational to changing the “family dance.”
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I treat a wide array of conditions, and offer a comprehensive, integrative treatment approach. We observe the condition or challenge from multiple perspectives, and theoretical orientations, to find the most effective strategy to bring relief and healing. I treat depression, anxiety, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, ADHD, Bipolar Disorder, issues of infidelity, addiction, porn addiction, alcoholism, drug addiction, codependency, among others. I provide many couples with education and experience employing healthy communication tools, and establishing and holding boundaries that protect themselves and their loved ones, and that preserve their own innate dignity.