F.A.Q.

Q: Why did you become a therapist?

I felt called to help those suffering from psychological and spiritual pain.

Q: What is the difference between a PsyD,  PhD, Psychoanalyst, and Psychiatrist?

A Psy.D. or Doctor of Psychology emphasizes the clinical skills or applied aspects of psychology.

A Ph.D. or Doctor of Philosophy (Psychology) is a research degree. If you need psychological testing or are looking for someone with a broader theoretical psychological perspective you may want to look for this kind of psychologist.

A Psychoanalyst is a mental health practitioner who specializes in helping patients uncover the deeper roots or layers of one’s psychological impairments. In much the same way as it took years for you to form your personality, so too psychoanalysis typically involves multiple sessions per week over a long period of time to reform your personality structure. Classical Psychoanalysts have traditionally been MD’s trained in Freudian psychoanalysis, whereas most Contemporary Relational Psychoanalysts are not MD’s; nor is their theoretical framework and technique “classical.”

A Psychiatrist is an MD (medical doctor) specializing in psychological impairments resulting from physical problems. In general, treatment involves prescribing psychotropic medications and somatic therapies without psychotherapy. A psychiatrist may or may not do research. In most jurisdictions in the US, you would need to see an MD of some kind  for medication.

Q: I want to “shop around” and meet a few therapists before deciding. Is that okay?

Finding a therapist who’s a good fit is like finding a partner or friend who’s a good fit. If it doesn’t feel right, I encourage you to “shop around” to find a therapist you feel comfortable working with.

Q: What exactly is psychotherapy, anyway?

As I see it, therapy should provide first and foremost, a safe, empathic, and compassionate and collaborative context in which a patient can explore the meaning of one’s suffering in such a way as to be able to integrate it into a healthier way of life. To feel you’re not alone in your suffering has immense therapeutic value. In this sense, I see therapy as a mutually collaborative search by fellow sufferers.

But it’s one thing to feel less alone in finding fellow siblings in darkness, it’s quite another to engage in a process leading to greater enlightenment and hope. In this sense therapy is not mutual in that it ideally provides guidance which may feel frightening insofar as one’s reliance on others in one’s past has been abused. For me, at least,  therapy is essentially or more deeply a caring personal relationship upon which basis alone a professional or business relationship can stand.

But it’s also not a “love cure” insofar as this is construed as feeling separated from growth in one’s own experiential knowledge. The wisest guides  in our history have consistently maintained that “the way” to the realization of such a good or more fulfilled or actualized life is through experiential rather than abstract knowledge – insight imbued with feeling – which brings with it the requisite power to orient our lives even in the worst circumstances toward a truly reliable hope.

From this lens, therapy provides guidance that can confirm your own experiential sense that there is a Way. That there is hope even when all seems hopeless. It provides  a collaborative context within which you may feel safe and supported enough to search for meaning, purpose, and value for your life.

Q: Will it hurt?

Yes!

Is there anything of real and substantial value that doesn’t involve discomfort? One of the things we must learn is that pain is not necessarily a bad thing. If you had a malignant tumor and didn’t feel the pain, would you be motivated to look for a cure? And the same is true with pleasure. Not all forms of pleasure are good. Some can even find a form of pleasure in hurting both others and ourselves.

The process leading to core personality change is especially not easy. To consider new ideas takes us out of our comfort zone. To open our eyes to new possibilities typically includes bringing back to mind thoughts and feelings, choices and experiences we’ve spent a life-time blocking out, denying, or wanting to forget. You may want to run from choices that appear to offer only bad alternatives. But running doesn’t make the problems go away and sitting on the fence of indecision is just another decision unlikely to lead to good consequences. Our goal is not to judge in the sense of condemning you, but to collaborate together to acknowledge these difficulties and fears and face them together. You can learn from your mistakes in the confidence that our goal is to increasingly engage with a self-authentic, self-empathic, and self-compassionate Voice aimed at helping you find your way into an increasingly healthier life.

Keep in mind that the most glorious moments in our lives may also be the most painful. In moments of great despair we may recognize the opportunity for a choice that will define our character and our future. Our own suffering – even suffering that results from our own worst choices – can enable us to more empathically feel the suffering of others and nourish our capacity to love.

Q: How long will it take?

That depends on where you are, where you’ve come from, and where you’re going. It depends on your present willingness and ability to change. As naive as this may sound, I don’t believe anyone is past hope if and insofar as one is willing to turn toward the mere possibility of a life worth living.

I believe too that by an inviolable law of love who or what we most love or trust we become like.  To place your trust in love in the sense of goodness cannot fail to make you better than you are. And like most things worth seeking in life, the more you put into it, the more you’re likely to get out of it.

The length of time in therapy will depend on where you are in your life journey and what it is you’re really and most deeply seeking. If you’re looking for a quick fix, e.g., for symptom amelioration, I’m probably not the best therapist for you. But if you’re looking to confront and resolve the deepest existential concerns of your life, then I might be a good fit for you. And that will take some time.

Q: What is “Existential Psychotherapy”?

I use the phrase to refer to the sense in which our universally felt search for meaning, value, and purpose in or with our lives is rooted in the nature of, and our relationship to, reality or existence itself.

That is, I believe that a search for meaning is not only inseparably bound-up with our relationship to those around us, or even the condition of humanity today, but also includes our relationship to our collective human history and its present stage of moral or spiritual evolution. And this, in turn, is rooted in how we perceive the nature of existence or reality itself. Is human life and all life truly of value? If so, what does this value consist of?  The most insightful witnesses in our history not only deeply believed, but testified or bore witness to the fact that humanity is worth saving and that each of us can play a unique part in literally saving the world. I believe, no one can avoid taking a stand on such issues for better or worse.

Q: What kinds of issues can you help with?

I am especially drawn to patients struggling with deep psychological, emotional or spiritual trauma who fear there may be no hope of real and substantial change. Those suffering from deeply felt loneliness in a world that so often seems coldly indifferent to our plight.  I am drawn to those yearning for a profoundly meaningful form of love that can enable them to see their own unique value and the unique value of each and all of us.

I have worked with the depressed, anxious, traumatized, and suicidal. With the young who are often frustrated and angry, impulsive and unable to control their rage. With “outcasts” or “outsiders” of an almost endless variety who feel marginalized in an uncaring world.  With those struggling with academic and career failures. With couples and families who find it difficult to relate to one another. With eating disordered patients and those suffering from various forms of addiction who are hard-pressed to break free of their chains. In all these cases, I suggest, there is a core unmet need. In the words of the mystic, William Law, “Through all the universe of things, nothing is uneasy, unsatisfied, or restless but because it is not governed by love, or because it’s nature has not reached or attained the full birth of the spirit of love. For when that is done, every hunger is satisfied, and all complaining, murmuring, accusing, resenting, rebelling, and striving are as totally suppressed and overcome as the coldness, thickness, and horror of darkness are suppressed and overcome by the breaking forth of the light.”

Q: I’m totally hopeless and can’t change. Is there any reason for me to try therapy anyway?

I know what it feels like to believe you can’t change. To feel that it’s all hopeless. Where even our so-called helping institutions like education, religion and therapy feel like “just more world.”  I know the ambivalence in your despair. But that despair – up to a point – is not a complete absence of hope, but a form of distance from it. We may be holding onto a spark of hope like a spark of life desperately in need of it being nourished so as to blossom into greater fullness of life.

Our work together is to bridge this distance. To help you see for yourself that even in the seemingly worst circumstances you can respond to your suffering in a way that can open a doorway to hope.