Individual Therapy
Therapy with me begins with an assessment of our fit for working together. One essential element for healing is feeling safe. We both contribute to the safety of the therapeutic alliance via mutual respect and honesty. I conduct a diagnostic evaluation or intake across the first 2 sessions. During this time, I will assess whether I can be of benefit to you. I do not accept clients who I believe I cannot be helpful to, and if this is the case, I will refer you to others who work well with your presenting concern.
After starting treatment, we will discuss my working understanding of your concerns, my proposed treatment plan, therapeutic objectives, and possible outcomes of the therapy. If you have questions about any of the interventions used in the course of your therapy, their possible risks, my expertise in employing them or about the treatment plan in general, please ask me. Individual therapy sessions are typically 50 minutes long, at a frequency of once a week. Meeting more than once a week is based on severity of need.
A regular session with me looks like a check-in on how you are currently doing. This is your chance to practice taking up space, be heard and share how daily life is affecting you both positively and negatively. Then I will share my agenda for our session. Based on your treatment plan, I typically have 2-3 topic areas I will lead you in exploration or will provide psychoeducation. You are able to add and subtract from this agenda. The agenda simply helps me utilize our 50 minutes most effectively. The last ten minutes of session is used to summarize insights from the session, recalibrate if it was a particularly heavy session, and assign homework and schedule for next week.
Therapy is a collaborative, active process. In order for your therapy to be most successful, you will need to work on things we talk about both during our sessions and outside of our sessions. You are expected to play an active role in your therapy, including collaborating with me to identify treatment goals, completing questionnaires when appropriate, and designing and completing homework assignments.