Compassionate and evidence-based psychotherapy and specialized evaluations for trauma, anxiety, & depression.
It's not who you are; it's what happened to you.
Individuals, Couples, Families, Children, & Adolescents
BOOK A FREE CONSULTATIONTrauma can happen in all sorts of ways. We can experience big, isolated events that shake us to the core, such as the death of a loved one or an accident. We can also experience trauma over longer time, such as parents who were overly critical, or completely lacking appropriate boundaries; physical, emotional and sexual abuse; bullying; or illness. Regardless of the HOW, unhealed trauma impacts our beliefs about ourselves, the world, our behaviors, and our lives. Our therapists can help you heal and live life with ease.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a psychological treatment for which there is ample scientific evidence demonstrating improvement in depression, anxiety, martial problems, trauma reactions, and low self-esteem. CBT therapy helps patients identify common thought patterns and how they impact their feelings and behaviors. CBT strategies can include teaching patients how to challenge and re-evaluate their thoughts, increasing awareness of motivation for certain behaviors, learning how to problem-solve, and gradually exposing oneself to a fear instead of avoiding it. CBT therapy involves in-between session assignments to help generalize skills that are learned and practiced in session.
Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) is a psychological treatment shown to help significantly reduce or extinguish trauma reactions in children, adolescents, and their parents. TF-CBT addresses the negative beliefs, dysregulated emotions and behaviors in children/adolescents and their caregivers that are responses to traumas such as sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, domestic violence, traumatic loss, multiple traumas, medical traumas, and mass or natural disasters. TF-CBT is founded on a CBT approach, so unhelpful thoughts are targeted in treatment in order to improve emotional and behavioral functioning. The target population for this treatment are individuals ages 3-18 and who remember being exposed to at least one trauma.
Skills Training in Affective & Interpersonal Regulation - Trauma-Narrative Story Telling (STAIR-NST) is a psychological treatment that combines traditional evidence-based PTSD therapy (Narrative Therapy) and skills training directed at restoring and improving emotion regulation and relationship management. STAIR-NST is for older adolescents and adults who have suffered traumas that are either single incidents or chronic, including sexual abuse, physical abuse, domestic violence, traumatic loss, emotional abuse, parental abuse, or wars. The goal of STAIR-NST is to strike a balance between addressing past events while responding effectively to the demands of present life.
Somatic Therapy is a psychological treatment founded on the understanding that the mind and body are connected; always working in tandem. In somatic therapy, various mind-body techniques are utilized to reduce tension, the severity or frequency of some physiological symptoms (e.g., gastrointestinal problems; sleep disturbances), and improve mood. Somatic therapy would be ideal for someone who has endured trauma, suffers from anxiety, or has chronic physical ailments. When stress is experienced, the body releases stress hormones to prepare us to fight, flee, freeze, or fawn, which triggers a plethora of physiological reactions, including rapid heart beating, shallow breathing, tense muscles, etc. When we do not release the stress in a healthy manner, the stress remains stored in our body, resulting in an accumulation of stress. What is stored in our body, affects our thoughts and feelings. If we fail to pay attention to our body's call for help, our mental health suffers in tandem.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is a psychological treatment founded on cognitive behavioral therapy that has been widely studied and demonstrated to show effective results in reducing emotion dysregulation, suicidal ideation, and improving relational skills. DBT therapy helps patients cultivate a balance of acceptance and change. In fact, the four treatment modules taught in DBT therapy focus on acceptance or change: Mindfulness & Distress Tolerance (acceptance-oriented skills). It is a skills-based treatment, whose approach is instructional in nature and much less exploratory then other treatment modalities. DBT therapy can be used with children as young as 6 years-old, and with adolescents and adults.
Family Systems Therapy (FST) is a psychological treatment that is based on the notion that family members are emotionally connected as a unit. In family systems therapy, the connectedness and reactivity of family members are explored in order to develop healthy family dynamics. Smaller units (couple) or larger units (parents and children) can participate in FST. FST is helpful in decreasing martial conflict, improving parent-child/sibling communication, increasing independence from family members, and establishing healthy family boundaries.
Parent Management Training (PMT) is a psychological treatment that is delivered directly to parents who are seeking help in modifying their children's behavior. Kazdin's model of PMT focuses on defining a desired behavior and then creating as many opportunities as possible for the child to practice the behavior and receive positive reinforcement for the behavior. Specific strategies, such as teaching parents the "ABC's" of behaviors are taught in session, and parents are also given the opportunity to practice newly learned parenting skills in session before they are expected to implement them in real world scenarios. PMT has been shown to be widely effective in cases where parents feel their children are "out of control" or defiant.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy (EMDR) is a psychological treatment that helps people heal from disturbing life experiences. Just as the body is naturally inclined to heal physical wounds, EMDR theory believes that the mind heals emotional wounds. The goal of EMDR therapy is to eliminate affective distress, reformulate negative beliefs, and reduce physiological arousal. Strategies used in EMDR aim at accessing traumatic memory networks in an effort to form new adaptive associations. The patients will still remember the image, but not feel intense disturbance, and the negative beliefs will be replaced with more rationale cognitive insights. EMDR therapy is suitable for children, adolescents, and adults.
We are a team of dedicated clinicians who are experts in providing patients with the highest quality, research-based treatments and evaluations. Every treatment and evaluation is tailor-fit to every patient’s individual needs.
Founder, Clinical Director, & Psychologist
Clinical Psychotherapist
Clinical Psychotherapist
Administrative Assistant
