Working together to transform hurt into healing
I provide individual, family, and play therapy for children, adolescents, and adults.
Contact Information
I currently have a private practice as an outpatient therapist at:
Integrative Psychological & Assessment Services
8765 Aero Drive, Suite 221
San Diego, CA 92123
Office: (619) 384-1598
Fax: (858) 268-9810
Integrative Psychological & Assessment Services
8765 Aero Drive, Suite 221
San Diego, CA 92123
Office: (619) 384-1598
Fax: (858) 268-9810
There are many reasons an adult or child may seek counseling:
As we begin life there is the hope that it will be filled with happiness and that we will have support from others when we need it, that we will be able to trust the people around us not to cause us hurt, and that we will have the skills to overcome the obstacles that do arise. This is not often the case and that is when we turn to others for help to guide us through these difficult times.
Sometimes we need support with a current situation in our lives and other times we need to deal with something that happened in the past. There are also times when nothing seems to go right and we need some immediate crisis intervention either for ourselves or to help us cope with a difficult relationship.
How I can help:
When these times arise it is important to find the right support to meet you or your child’s needs. I will work creatively to help you or your child increase awareness of the problems in your lives by exploring thoughts and feelings, enhancing the use of the senses, emphasizing self-nurturing experiments, using expressive arts techniques, and developing a nurturing and compassionate relationship to help you or your child feel better and improve the quality of your lives, your relationships, and your future.
I feel the key is developing our therapeutic relationship with you or your child in order to use specific strategies to encourage expression of thoughts and feelings to let what is inside to come out. This process will increase awareness of patterns that are no longer working for you or your child and allow collaboration on finding alternatives that will work. These techniques also enhance coping strategies to help you or your child to appropriately express emotions and enhance your self-esteem by gaining a sense of mastery.
Why play therapy?
Play therapy is an effective and important method of working with children for several reasons. It is a way to meet the child at his/her level and begin to develop the therapeutic relationship where they are. It allows exploration of likes, dislikes, strengths, and weaknesses, which in a safe and accepting relationship builds self-esteem. It also encourages expression of feelings on a level the child can understand. Children do not have the vocabulary or cognitive development to discuss their feelings, thoughts, and issues in depth. Play is a wonderful medium that acts as their words and gives them a language to do this. It is very useful with children that are resistant to talking or that have difficulty using language to express how they feel. It creates a safe distance to express difficult emotions such as when a child uses a puppet to express how they feel or share a difficult experience they went through rather than having to say it directly. Some of the benefits include building social skills, enhancing problem solving skills, practicing anger management skills, enhancing self-esteem, working through trauma and grief issues, expression of feelings, and self-exploration among others.
There are many ways I use play therapy with children and the activities can vary widely. I might ask the child to create a scene in the sandtray and then explore together their projected material to learn more about their own feelings and issues. We sometimes create different things out of clay and talk about how these things might feel or what they experience. We might smash or pound on the clay as a safe, healthy and fun way to release anger. I might have them tell a story through dolls or puppets about the abuse they experienced or how they feel about a death of someone they love. I also use stories, games, drawing, collages, paintings, dolls and dollhouse, and any number of others activities and toys. Children are often the best at creating their own ideas for games or play activities, which helps to develop their self-esteem, allows what they are experiencing to be expressed, and gain a sense of mastery over the problems they are having.
Although I have referred to these activities in the context of play therapy with children, there is no age limit for the use of many of these activities. While some adolescents or adults may feel silly at first, it can be a very useful and valuable medium of expression, self-exploration, and insightful experience for them as well.
Professional experience and training:
I have post-graduate training in play therapy, gestalt play therapy, gestalt therapy, expressive arts, and techniques for working with how the body holds in emotions and stress such as somatic experiencing, trauma releasing exercises, relaxation skills, and yoga therapy with children and adolescents.
In these settings I gained experience doing individual, group, and family therapy, working with parents on parenting difficulties, helping parents navigate the school systems to get their children’s needs met with teachers or through IEP meetings, and connecting families with other needed community resources.
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2 comments:
Do you have any tips to deal with trauma therapy? One of our adopted children have some serious problems and I think it was because of trauma. I don't know what caused it but I still want to help. http://www.roadtowellbeing.com
Yes, I would recommend the book by Peter Levine and Maggie Kline called Trauma-Proofing Your Kids. I would also recommend trauma specific play therapy and/or family therapy to better support the healing process.
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