How I work

My primary approach as a psychologist is psychoanalytic psychotherapy. This is the way of providing treatment that people often think of when they picture "talk therapy." Patients (Some people prefer other terms but I say patients for two reasons... 1) I am a doctor with the goal of helping you get better and 2) I appreciate your patience in the times when I'm not quite getting it) come into the office, get comfortable, and speak freely about whatever is important to them that day, with a priority given to how they feel and what is behind this feeling. 

Speaking in this way on a regular basis to someone invested in your concerns and seeking to understand you leads to new awareness in relation to what your are struggling with, whether that is difficult emotions, conflicts with others, or classical "symptoms" like panic or rumination. The more you know your inner life - the thoughts, feelings, memories, and dreams you may never before have openly given voice to - the richer your life can be. A wonderful side effect of this "going deeper" is that in doing so the root causes of emotional pain can be brought into the light and addressed. This could mean, for example, recognizing unaddressed shame and applying greater self-compassion as a result, or it could look like taking a new perspective on childhood patterns of coping that have operated in the background for so long they no longer even register as something to question. The operating principle behind my way of working is that when something previously unfelt or unseen becomes known, a shift becomes possible. 

Returning to what you might expect in therapy, as you share what comes up for you, I'll listen closely, empathize, and ask questions or make reflections that support your "going deeper" and your experiencing of your feelings. I will also make practical interventions where it seems useful, whether that's sharing information about how other people handle similar conflicts, giving perspective that supports self-compassionate understanding of your experience, expressing my own reactions if I think you might be helped by knowing how I'm affected, or making reframing comments that present what might be a more adaptive way of looking at a situation. In this way, the psychoanalytic approach overlaps in part with CBT and humanistic therapies.

You might also watch this video from Nancy McWilliams, a psychoanalyst and professor at Rutgers University, in which she shares a nice description of what makes psychoanalytic thinking unique in the world of therapy: "What is Mental Health?": Nancy McWilliams on Picturing it With Elliot