Clinical Approaches

You may choose in-person sessions at my Pleasant Hill (Walnut Creek adjacent) office or virtual sessions via a HIPPA compliant video conference service.

I offer both brief-focused (short-term) and growth-oriented (long form) psychotherapies.

A brief-focused approach is useful for crisis intervention. Time-limited and short-term, the focus is on cultivating tools to resolve problems or reduce symptoms quickly.

A growth-oriented approach is ongoing and depth-focused. This approach is useful for persons who are committed to living a more meaningful life by improving their work/school, social, and intimate relationships through expanding awareness and cultivating deeper understanding of one's own conscious and unconscious thoughts, feelings, beliefs, desires, attitudes, and behaviors.

As part of a multi-disciplinary approach, I integrate evidence-based interventions with well-known therapeutic orientations:

  • Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy uses the principles of cognitive therapy, which teaches positive behavioral alternatives for anger management, anxiety reduction, problem solving and effective communication, and combines them with practices and attitudes based on the cultivation of mindfulness. 

  • Gestalt Therapy is an experiential therapy which focuses on the whole of the client's life, accentuating present moment awareness, self regulation, and personal responsibility.

  • Liberation Psychology seeks to encourage and advance personal and collective understanding toward a more just, peaceful, and sustainable world through the cultivation of ethical practices.

  • Drama Therapy utilizes embodiment, enactment, archetypes, and roleplay to invoke bodily awareness, situational clarity, and deeper emotional and relational understanding.

  • Narrative Therapy offers a unique way of looking at a person's problem(s), as seperate from oneself but as part of one's life story, in order to increase self-mastery and encourage behavioral change.

  • Expressive Arts Therapies emphasize creative and emotional expression through alternative and nonverbal means using techniques such as sand play, art making, music, and photography.

  • Geek Therapy is an affinity-based model, which utilizes popular media that resonates deeply with a client (games, comics, film/tv, etc.) as an intervention pathway for meaning-making, forging personal identity, and understanding core values.

  • emWave HRV Biofeedback is a training tool used by Stanford, Duke Medical Center, Kaiser, and many other top medical centers to help persons manage emotions, reduce stress, sleep better, and shift away from compulsive behaviors.  It instills the use of breath and emotional physiology to achieve heart coherence for greater calm and focus.

  • Walk and Talk Therapy is facilitated outside the office on a paved walkway, nature path, or hiking trail. This approach integrates mood-improving physical activity via parallel walking, which can spur contemplative and creative thought. It is also useful for those who are anxious with face-to-face interaction, allowing for easier engagement with visual diversions. This requires completion of a Consent to Therapy Outside the Office form to acknowledge and accept the additional risks inherent in working outside the confines of an office.

  • Therapeutic Tabletop and Role-Play Games offer opportunities for building distress tolerance, emotional regulation, values clarification, identity exploration, social interaction, and enlivening play. It is a useful intervention for individual identity work, family therapy, or quelling sibling rivalry. Pro-social Game Groups and Events are offered on an ongoing basis through Gamescape Center for Creativity and Growth.

For more information or to arrange a no cost consultation, please call me at 415-902-5638.