Psychotherapy for Individuals and Couples in Santa Cruz

By taking the time to examine yourself and expand the awareness of your inner life, you can discover parts of yourself that are running on old information - often laid down in childhood - that are no longer serving you. The work of listening deeply to yourself and identifying inner unconscious processes that shape who you are and how you exist in the world can be incredibly liberating, and I have seen this process help to resolve traumas, grieve losses, face fears, and ease symptoms like anxiety, depression, and addiction. It is not, however, fast, easy, or convenient.

Why do we tend to repeat these types of patterns in relationships? What most couples are missing to get them out of these ruts is genuine curiosity. When you can foster a curiosity about what might be happening in you, in your partner, and in the relationship, you open the door to new insights, new ways of being, and new ways of relating.

Your experience in therapy is going to vary greatly depending on the theoretical orientation and underlying ideas that your psychotherapist holds. Different psychotherapists and different theories of psychological healing can vary vastly, and therapy is not a one size fits all solution.

Your anxiety is not the end of the story, and coming up with the best breathing technique there is will ultimately be unsatisfying because your symptoms are not just a problem to be gotten rid of - they are a communication from a deeper part of you to be paid attention to and understood.

For many people, avoiding talking about or even thinking about aspects of their lives that are the source of pain is a strategy they turn to often. While avoiding pain can feel like a tempting strategy to get through life, most people find that eventually what you don’t face finds a way of expressing itself in other ways. Most people find that when they actually do face the difficult aspects of their lives and emotions and find a way to sit with the difficulty rather than avoiding it, they experience much more peace and relief as a result. Many studies show that people who open up in talk therapy see benefits in their life

How exactly does psychotherapy help you grow, learn, and heal? For some schools of thought, the answer to this question is found in prescriptive tools or techniques, manualized treatments, and medications. In Depth or Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy which I practice, the answer to this question is found much more in the quality of the therapeutic relationship between therapist and client. What some people want when they enter the psychotherapy office is to have a kind of experience in a relationship, a new kind of experience they might have never had before, where they feel heard, understood, encouraged, and supported in a deep embodied way.

In this video I outline some of the basic tenets of active listening including shutting out distractions, giving your partner space to speak, repeating what you heard them say back to them, and more. Active listening can help build the foundations of a healthy communication dynamic in your marriage, friendship, or work relationships.

Marriage is a wonderful part of life for most people, however what we don’t often hear about in the media or on facebook feeds is how common marital conflict is. Many people experience conflict in their marriages or long term relationships that sometimes doesn’t show up until years or even decades into a relationship. When you are in a relationship with someone for a long time, you and your partner will inevitably change and grow, and your relationship will have to change and grow with you.

Depression manifests in various forms and affects individuals differently. Many people with depression experience a loss of interest in previously fun or exciting activities, they feel a sense of hopelessness about the future, and often a sense of guilt or self hatred. What some people don’t realize about depression is that in its more advanced forms, depression can start to affect biological functioning, leading to insomnia, eating difficulties, severe fatigue, or an inability to get out of bed. Experiencing such a severe depressive episode can make you feel trapped and angry with yourself. When depression is really bad, just “snapping out of it” isn’t really an option, and gentler, compassionate approaches are necessary.

The concept of toxic positivity refers to a mindset which overemphasizes positivity to the exclusion of the more complex and challenging realities of life. This approach can be harmful as it leaves little room for you to be honest with yourself about the negative emotions you are experiencing. Everyone experiences negative emotions, and success in mental health does not mean eliminating these emotions, but learning to live with and acknowledge negativity when it comes up.

Premarital therapy offers a valuable opportunity for you and your future spouse to prepare yourselves and your relationship for the life you are embarking on together. With divorce being a common outcome for many marriages, premarital therapy can help you avoid specific pitfalls that often lead to bitterness, discord, and ultimately, divorce. By addressing potential conflicts early on and exploring various aspects of your relationship that can commonly cause existential conflicts, premarital therapy equips you to navigate challenges collaboratively and build resilience together.

While classic or “simple” PTSD is what we often think of when we think of trauma, developmental or complex ptsd is much more common, and in some ways much more insidious. Someone who has suffered from severe complex ptsd might constantly feel like they are unworthy, they might feel a distinct and severe sense of anxiety in close relationships, they might chronically fawn or people-please in order to appease the perceived needs of others, or there might be other complex expressions of insecurity or anxiety in relationships.

For many people, drugs and alcohol are a way to medicate deeper emotional wounds. Taking care of those wounds in therapy is a great way to improve your overall mental wellbeing and your relationship with drugs and alcohol.

The Covid-19 pandemic has now lasted almost two whole years, and during that time it has had a huge impact on many areas of our lives. Many people have found their existing depression has gotten a lot worse over the pandemic, and other people have developed depression for the first time in their lives during Covid-19. In this article I’ll outline a couple of ways in which the Covid-19 pandemic has affected us all and could contribute to worsening depression symptoms.

Major depressive disorder can be incredibly difficult to live with. If you have experienced depression yourself, then you have probably wondered what you can do to help alleviate it in your life. If you are struggling with major depressive disorder and you want to try to help your mental health without the support of medication, here are some ideas to help you get started.

If you’re suffering from depression, or you’re not sure whether what you are experiencing is depression or just a temporary low mood, you might be looking for a quick way to assess how you are feeling from an outside objective perspective.

If you are struggling with negative moods, feeling “off”, or having low self esteem, it might be hard to tell sometimes if what you are experiencing is just a temporary low point which is nothing serious, or if you are experiencing a depressive episode in your life. Understanding whether or not you are suffering from depression can be incredibly important in how you treat whatever mood you are in and whether or not you seek help.

If you are struggling to resolve disagreements in your relationship then you might be wondering how to come to more connection and communication with your partner. If you look past the surface issue to take a look at what is really going on, you stand a better chance to resolve disagreement and come to resolution.

Fight, flight, freeze, and fawn are four common reactions we see when someone has endured a traumatic experience. In trauma healing, understanding and reconciling the reactions of fight, flight, freeze, and fawn is essential to heal post-traumatic stress.

We all have parts of ourselves that are sometimes difficult to love. Learning to cope with and be with the difficult parts of ourselves is an essential step towards healing and self acceptance. Learning to accept these “difficult” parts is an important part of trauma healing, healing from depression, anxiety, or low self esteem.

Harm reduction is a great way to help you assess and improve your relationship with drugs and alcohol so that you can avoid the negative effects of addiction and overuse. Harm reduction is a central part of my philosophy in drug and alcohol counseling and I find it very helpful for people struggling with their drinking or drug use.

Learn to use “I statements” to improve your communication and increase intimacy with your partner. I statements are an extremely important part of a connective relationship and healthy communication habits.

I want to talk about an acronym that I found really useful in working with some of my clients lately. This acronym is from some mindfulness meditation teachers, and they use it to describe a process of managing through thoughts when you're in meditation. It’s a way to deal with thought patterns that might be getting in the way of your focus. The acronym is R-A-I-N, and it stands for Recognize, Accept, Investigate and Nurture.

Today I want talk a little bit about a couple of ways that you can ground yourself when you're feeling overwhelmed. So, when you have a lot of anxiety or a lot of overwhelm, as a lot of us are having during this pandemic, it's important that you have a couple of tools in your back pocket that you can use to help yourself calm down and ground. So, I'm going to go through a couple of different ways that you can quickly and hopefully, very easily, bring your activation level down and bring your anxiety level down a couple of notches.

A lot of people struggle with their communication, in their relationships in their lives, and one big portion of communication, half of it, is being able to listen effectively to others. I think, frankly, that the world would be a better place if we could all be able to listen to each other a little better. I want to talk about why you should want become a better listener, and some ways you might try to do this in your life.