Psychotherapy Services

Mindfulness is the practiced skill of non-judgmental awareness and acceptance of our present moment experience, including all our unwanted thoughts, feelings, sensations and urges. Mindfulness is a tool that teaches us to accept all of our unwanted thoughts, feelings and unwanted internal experiences as part of life, regardless of whether they are "good" or "bad.”

Mindfulness originated in eastern philosophy and is based on the premise that our attachment to feeling good and our aversion to feeling bad are the cause of much our suffering. Much of the time, when things are difficult, we take up compulsive or avoidant behaviors to make ourselves feel better.

Virtually everybody experiences unwanted thoughts from time to time, for we human beings are not always in charge of what we think. But for sufferers of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), the problem is not just the presence of unwanted thoughts, but also the attention and meaning one gives to them.

When clients begin to effectively recognize their distorted thinking and to more actively challenge their internal mental bully, therapy proceeds to what is known as Mindfulness-Based CBT. A simple way of describing Mindfulness for OCD is that it is learning the skill of nonjudgmental awareness and acceptance of one's thoughts and feelings.

Using Mindfulness, one learns to focus not on changing or eliminating unwanted thoughts or feelings, but rather on fully accepting their existence. After all, the thoughts and feelings are there whether we like it or not! The ultimate goal of Mindfulness for OCD and anxiety is for clients to hone their ability to fully accept the presence of their unwanted thoughts, and to recognize that just because they have these thoughts does not imply that they have meaning. A thought is not "good" or "bad,” it just "is.” In practicing Mindfulness, clients work on changing their perspective towards the unwanted thoughts that plague their mind, and in turn, changing their cognitive and behavioral reaction to them.

When clients begin to develop the ability to truly accept their unwanted thoughts, and to recognize that these thoughts do not automatically have meaning, treatment turns to the behavioral part of CBT, which is known as "Exposure and Response Prevention" (ERP).

The goal of ERP is straightforward - to expose one's self to the feared thought or situation, without performing any compulsive or avoidant responses.

Imago Relationship Therapy (IRT) is a bio-psycho-social solution-focused approach to coupledom, combining psychology, sociology, anthropology, cosmology, neuroscience, interpersonal neurobiology and trans-generational science.

Imago Relationship Therapy (IRT) offers:

• An engine for change.
• A deeper understanding of what has happened in your relationship.
• Greater understanding of the part each of you has played in the problems.
• An explanation of why you are attracted to each other.
• Knowledge that you can carry with you in the future.
• The tools for you to become your own relationship expert.
• An environment within which you can have safe conversations.
• A future within which you co-create the healing of your childhood wounds.

See video: Why we pick difficult partners

Dialectical means that 2 IDEAS can be both be true at the SAME TIME.

• There is always more than one TRUE way to see a situation, and more than one TRUE opinion, idea, thought or dream.
• Two things that seem like (or are) opposites can BOTH be true.
• All people have something unique, different and worthy to teach us.
• A life worth living has both comfortable and uncomfortable aspects (happiness AND sadness; anger AND peace; hope AND discouragement; fear AND ease, etc.).
• All points of view have both TRUE and FALSE within them.
• Examples: You are right AND the other person is right.
• You are doing the best you can AND you need to try harder, do better and be more motivated to change.
• You can take care of yourself AND be more motivated to change.

Discover skills available to work with your mind and body if you have experienced childhood trauma, anxiety and a variety of problems driven by negative affect and negative beliefs.