Hello, and welcome to this Overview. If you already know you want to work with me, please go to my Welcome page. I am a heart-centered practitioner and that is where you will feel my heart.:)
I’ve created this data-filled page for you who are still researching whether I am the practitioner who can hold you through the journey of what ails you to the other side of the mountain. I’ve prepared this to let you know some of the issues I work with, and some of the strategies I employ.
Some basic information, right there are my card, is that my practice is in Greenwich Connecticut, and that I use a blend of techniques from the psychotherapeutic and consciousness traditions. In addition, know I work with all ages, in the various modalities: individual psychotherapy with children, adolescents, and adults, couples therapy, marital counseling, family therapy, and play therapy with young children. I often run workshops in somatic experiencing techniques, Integral Somatic Psychology techniques, Breathwork journeying, parenting, Adult Children of Alcoholics and more. I’ve been in practice since 1975, have supervised other therapists, and I give trainings to therapists in trauma-healing techniques. I’ve had my practice in Greenwich CT since 1999. I have studied and practiced more strategies than I list, CBT, DBT, EMDR, to name a few, however I list below some of my most used strategies, and ones that distinguish my practice.
Issues treated in working with me. Come to me with your anxiety, panic, depression, marital issues, wanting to set up your divorce in a way that would be best for your children, for anger management and to heal chronic rage, wanting a better relationship with your children, with your teenagers dealing with adolescent issues, your young child for social, behavioral, or developmental issues. Come for help with your relationships, and also to enhance you performance at work or academically or in sports you play. Come to me with your PTSD, your OCD, and ADHD, and with your bereavement, in whatever stage of grief you are in. Come to me whether you are straight of LGBTQ+, with the relational issues common to all of us, and for support with the gender and sexual orientation issues that arise out of the LGBTQ+ apace.
Strategies available to you in the Sanctuary of our work.
Somatic Experiencing is a cutting edge technology of how to shift a nervous system that is locked in ‘fight, flight, or freeze’ out of that dysregulation, and back into resiliency. Many of us suffering anxiety, depression, rage issues, relationship and performance issues, PTSD, have tried psychotherapy, only to find that despite understanding our issues, we are still acting out the same behaviors, and feeling stuck in the same negative states. So much of the time it is because our nervous system is programmed in a dysregulation, that autonomically has us controlled by fight, flight or freeze. Clinically, trauma is defined as a dysregulation of the nervous system. Dr. Peter Levine, developed the school of Somatic Experiencing in order to make interventions that directly affect the nervous system, to bring it back into resiliency. I am certified in somatic experiencing, use them to facilitate healing, and teach them to you as well, so you can use them when you feel yourself tensing, etc.
Integral Somatic Psychology is a technology of restoring resiliency to the nervous system, that works well with Somatic Experiencing, but orients more towards processing the emotions involved. Developed by Raja Selvam, and described in his book ‘The Practice of Embodying Emotion’, the belief is that it is often unprocessed emotion that perpetuates a dysregulation in the nervous system. I am certified in this school of trauma healing as well. I find the work on the nervous system to yield profound impact on symptoms, leaving you freer to be the person you believe yourself to be.
Breathwork Journeying is an experience I first had in Kripalu, a yoga and personal growth center in the Berkshires. I had a profound experience of awakening through this modality, and wanted to offer it to my clients and to otherwise spread the practice. Various schools have their own names for it, but the most prolific writer is Stanislav Grof, a psychiatrist who had been using psychedelics in the treatment of his patients to create profound transformational experiences, and when the psychedelics became illegal for psychiatrists to use, he began to facilitate our natural ability to journey. For 20 years I gave monthly workshops in journeying through breathwork, resulting in journeys as transformational as any with psychedelics. I continue to use breathwork journeying in my practice.
Subpersonality Work resolves the conflict between opposing parts within us. The part that wants to lose weight and the part that wants to eat the cake is something many of us are familiar with! The parent who believes in treating their children with respect and suffers guilt and remorse when they lose their temper might be another common experience. Resolution of the conflicting parts leaves us feeling Whole and with robust energy to move forward in our goals.
Hypnotherapy. Hypnosis achieves a state of consciousness useful in many ways for healing of issues. Hypnosis allows you awareness into phenomena that has lied just under your radar of awareness. Past life regression, and early life regression, can retrieve memories the processing of which supports you in dealing with, or healing, your present day issues, It is useful in goal achievement, in becoming decisive, in focusing, and thus in enhancing work or academic performance, or social performance.
Meditative States. Meditational states are a bedrock of my work. As Einstein says “Problems cannot be solved with the same mind set that created them.” I use meditative techniques to bring you into an altered state of consciousness where a new perspective can arise.
Metaphysical Principals. Metaphysical Principals. I have been a student of the lessons in A Course In Miracles, a book of metaphysical principals that has been translated into 104 languages and is studied in groups and individually around the world.
Play Therapy with young children. Play Therapy with young children. There are stresses in the lives of young children that developmentally they are not capable of speaking about without psychological injury. And yet the peril of their situation – abusive or addicted parents, being sexually molested, or of their trauma – witnessing a murder, demands support. Through story telling and drawings the child reveals their fears, their dilemmas, conclusions they are coming to. As a loving Presence, I repeat their stories either affirming the conclusions they are coming to as helpful, or changing the end of the story or elements in it to suggest a better strategy, or more helpful conclusion. With the development of trust, the child is able to share their fears rather than act them out, and symptoms are relieved.
Blend of techniques from the psychotherapeutic and consciousness traditions.
Addicts and Alcoholics in recovery therapy, Adult Children of Alcoholics treatment, substance abuse treatment