Find a Therapist in Petaluma, California.

Psychotherapy is a great tool to help you understand yourself better. Everybody can benefit from the self-knowledge that psychotherapy brings. With insight, understanding and humor you can live the life you want without the stumbling blocks the unexamined life brings. Psychotherapy can help you reveal the unconscious process that motivates and defines you. Self understanding is the key to making the good decisions that lead to a happy and fulfilled life.

Psychotherapy is not anything to be scared of, or intimidated about. Seeking out a therapist or being in therapy isn't an admission of weakness or some kind of character flaw. Therapy is a collaborative process and a partnership with someone who is trained in and experienced with facilitating personal growth. And in this process, you are in the driver's seat. Our minds and emotions and relationships involve complicated machinery just like our bodies do and in the same way a medical doctor helps you stay physically healthy, Psychotherapy is designed to help you be and stay mentally and socially strong, and continually in a position to take on life's many challenges as your best self.

Are You Experiencing Any of These? People often come to therapy to move forward in their lives, even if they have no significant symptoms. For many others, therapy is sought because they are experiencing: • Depression • Stress or anxiety • Unresolved conflicts with a spouse, children, bosses, and co-workers. • Grief and loss that has gone on too long. • Difficulty balancing all the responsibilities of their life. • Difficulty adjusting to changes in health, job situation or in the family. •Problems related to trauma in the distant or recent past. • Issues related to drinking or use of other substances. • Parenting difficulties with children.

After a recent traumatic event, you may need support in finding your footing again and trusting you are physically, relationally, and emotionally safe. Or perhaps a traumatic experience of the distant past was never resolved and you are newly concerned it may be threatening your current ambitions in life and love. In either case, you are ready to take back your power and thrive rather than merely survive in the aftermath. Mine is a relational psychodynamic approach, combined with mindfulness, creative arts, and somatic interventions, aimed at helping you feel – in every sense of the word – so you are empowered to heal.

My clients often find me easy to talk to and say they feel comfortable with me, trusting quickly. This can make the psychotherapeutic process easier and more effective for my clients, especially if they are nervous or don’t know what to expect. Therapy with me can range from just talking casually with each other, leading to insights, increased self awareness, and processing through emotional issues, or it could be more intensive deeper therapy like EMDR.

Psychotherapy is one tool of many that we might use to help us to heal the past, make changes in the present or to realign ourselves to manifest more of our gifts and talents. I have over 10 years of working with clients to transform their lives and feel that with support, kindness, clarity and compassion (with a hefty dose of curiosity!) we can come to love and accept ourselves as we truly are, even when the costs are high. Sometimes we have deep inner conflicts that feel impassable and in my years of experience helping clients to work through this and many other types of struggles, I have seen the power of therapy to heal pain and trauma and use them as gifts of empowerment and freedom.

Psychotherapy is the use of psychological methods to help a person change behavior and overcome problems in a positive manner. Its aim is to help people understand the thoughts behind feeling anxious or depressed and addressing these thinking patterns. Psychotherapy will help you change behaviors and habits that are limiting you, to experiencing your fullest potential.