About my training and practice approach
There are many different types of psychotherapists, including psychoanalysts, counselors, psychiatrists, psychologists, and marriage and family therapists.
I am licensed as a clinical social worker, with additional degrees in psychology and philosophy. I received my graduate degree from New York University and completed a post-graduate fellowship at Yale University. I chose to train as a clinical social worker because the clinical social work perspective on mental health made the most sense to me. The central idea of clinical social work is that in order to understand and help a person, therapists must be competent in considering all the aspects of their patients' lives, and to understand that people are always more than their genes, families of origin, defenses, anxieties, or thinking patterns. The clinical social work approach seeks to consider every relevant aspect of people's lives, as well as their ever-changing circumstances. In recent years, this perspective has been adopted by other specialties, but that wasn't always the case. A clinical social worker is a trained psychotherapist who has a graduate degree, has completed a 2-year clinical internship and at least 4,200 hours of clinical work, and has passed 2 national licensing exams. I developed my specialty practicing in different settings, including in a community clinic, treating people with acute mental illness; in a therapeutic school, working with young people with emotional or social difficulties; in a hospital, supporting people with cancer diagnoses or at the end of life; and at a local university, teaching psychology.
I view my role as a therapist as a mirror to you and our therapeutic relationship as an act of reflection that can only happen in the unique setting of therapy, which is private and dedicated entirely and insistently to you. During our time together, I will try to listen to you deeply and to reflect back to you the questions that you are formulating about your life and about your difficulties so that you can see yourself in new or more nuanced ways. I try to help you make contact with parts of yourself that have become disconnected or to illuminate patterns and obstacles that may be outside of your recognition. If you can take the chance to bring into our work the self-doubt, shame, stress, loneliness, or anguish that underscore your problems, the process of therapeutic reflection can help you find your way to a life that is more free, more engaged, and more meaningful to you. Outside of the expertise of reflecting you in this way, I do not direct, advise, or impress on you codes of morality or social normality that are outside of your own desires for yourself. I dedicate myself to being a psychotherapist; to me, this means that I'm not a theoretical instructor, lifestyle coach, advocate, activist, zealot, nor am I able to bring expertise in anything other than in how to talk and reflect in a way that aims to be exploratory, ethical, honest and dignified. You can be free to bring any thoughts, ideas, feelings, criticisms, opinions, or questions into therapy (including about me and about therapy itself) and expect to be helped with curiosity and goodwill, and to see yourself more clearly so that you can make choices about what you seek to change. This process of self-understanding and choice-making ultimately leads to the amelioration of the symptoms of your distress.
If by learning about my work from this site you think I might be the right therapist for you, I look forward to hearing from you.
I am licensed as a clinical social worker, with additional degrees in psychology and philosophy. I received my graduate degree from New York University and completed a post-graduate fellowship at Yale University. I chose to train as a clinical social worker because the clinical social work perspective on mental health made the most sense to me. The central idea of clinical social work is that in order to understand and help a person, therapists must be competent in considering all the aspects of their patients' lives, and to understand that people are always more than their genes, families of origin, defenses, anxieties, or thinking patterns. The clinical social work approach seeks to consider every relevant aspect of people's lives, as well as their ever-changing circumstances. In recent years, this perspective has been adopted by other specialties, but that wasn't always the case. A clinical social worker is a trained psychotherapist who has a graduate degree, has completed a 2-year clinical internship and at least 4,200 hours of clinical work, and has passed 2 national licensing exams. I developed my specialty practicing in different settings, including in a community clinic, treating people with acute mental illness; in a therapeutic school, working with young people with emotional or social difficulties; in a hospital, supporting people with cancer diagnoses or at the end of life; and at a local university, teaching psychology.
I view my role as a therapist as a mirror to you and our therapeutic relationship as an act of reflection that can only happen in the unique setting of therapy, which is private and dedicated entirely and insistently to you. During our time together, I will try to listen to you deeply and to reflect back to you the questions that you are formulating about your life and about your difficulties so that you can see yourself in new or more nuanced ways. I try to help you make contact with parts of yourself that have become disconnected or to illuminate patterns and obstacles that may be outside of your recognition. If you can take the chance to bring into our work the self-doubt, shame, stress, loneliness, or anguish that underscore your problems, the process of therapeutic reflection can help you find your way to a life that is more free, more engaged, and more meaningful to you. Outside of the expertise of reflecting you in this way, I do not direct, advise, or impress on you codes of morality or social normality that are outside of your own desires for yourself. I dedicate myself to being a psychotherapist; to me, this means that I'm not a theoretical instructor, lifestyle coach, advocate, activist, zealot, nor am I able to bring expertise in anything other than in how to talk and reflect in a way that aims to be exploratory, ethical, honest and dignified. You can be free to bring any thoughts, ideas, feelings, criticisms, opinions, or questions into therapy (including about me and about therapy itself) and expect to be helped with curiosity and goodwill, and to see yourself more clearly so that you can make choices about what you seek to change. This process of self-understanding and choice-making ultimately leads to the amelioration of the symptoms of your distress.
If by learning about my work from this site you think I might be the right therapist for you, I look forward to hearing from you.
